things that have been eating my life so far

1) last thursday, we marked 25 months together, and thinking it should be a milestone, i sent flowers and cake to her office address, in conspiracy with her immediate supervisor and other officemates.

i must say, for somebody who absolutely sucks when it comes to surprises, that one went pretty well. to wit:



(photos taken from Becky's facebook. thank you so much!)

2) plants vs zombies. enough said.

3) onslaught of typhoons, floods, natural calamities. at the work front, it's been pretty hectic since ondoy hit the country on sept. 26. fact: i've spent the past few weeks dreaming about maps of rivers and dams. once, i dreamt someone was asking me about the location of the ambuklao dam, and i woke up with "itogon, benguet" on my lips. i kid you not. sometimes, i take my job way too seriously.

4) glee. gossip girl.

i miss my words. a lot. lately it's been all about relief drives and dams and the Read-Along (incidentally -- another Quill award this year. yeah.) i wish i had more time to sit down for fiction, but lately, idk. words and i are just NOT friends.

and i've been spending far too much time singing an old song by the backstreet boys with my workmates. not that *that*'s a bad thing, but, you know. i mean, just this evening, in the aftermath of a rather splendid night out with them, we were operating on very little sleep that we ended up just laughing ENDLESSLY over, um, virtually nothing. idk, but what's up with that? :) it's awesome, really.

as for other things. wait, there are no other things. unless of course we're referring to pandas. in which case: PANDAS ARE AWESOME, OK?

♥

supposing,

it's all been said before:
girl stumbles upon girl's journal; girl stalks girl;
girl finds common friends; girl tries to get closer; girl asks girl out to group dates;
girl asks for girl's cell phone number; girl texts girl every single day,
keeps up with the randomicity,
wakes up early to catch girl's texts as she walks out of their house in the morning on her way to work, something about the blueness of the sky, or the sound of birds;
texts every 4 p.m. to remind girl to breathe; (every 4 p.m. - it takes only so many days to form a habit)
texts every night to ask about girl's day;
keeps up with girl's journal; tries not to overanalyze.

supposing, it's all been said before:
how girl falls in love with girl--
it's the slightest gestures,
the off-topic questions,
the sparkly flashes that make their way between the words.

it's all been said before, how we got here, but i guess it's always worth re-telling:
one night, i started writing love letters again, after a long time.
you were a moment's message away, but the distance was there, more than ever before; it was august. at the time i had no idea how close i was to breaking.
(i should have known, actually, granted i was writing letters again at the back of marlboro labels; that night there were ashes on the floor from one too many fags)

it's no secret, how four years prior to that day, septembers had been particularly filled with a sort of dread. (i wouldn't call them mistakes; just that i remember them pretty well.)
the night before the morning after, i slipped
into bed alongside you, holding your hand under the sheets, trying to watch tv.

supposing it can be said then,
that the rest of it's history, well, let me put it this way, instead:
the day after and the days after that are more than i could ever have hoped for
to contain within a heart this small.

i guess in the end that's all i really want to say.

monday dorkage

oh wow, it's been quite a while since i last sat down and just dorked. heh. felt good. maybe a change in layout is due around here, in the first place (it has been raining like crazy, and it's hardly summer anymore, yeah?). but in the meantime, i added december 2006 and january 2007 in the old blog backup and right now, i'm looking at coding a pretty prolific year. \o/

on other news, the girlfriend's lj is looking pretty ~sweet today. YEAH.

still, on other news: i am digging anberlin's new surrender album. god i thought i've moved on from this kind of music, but. heh. don't judge me.

Corazon Aquino, 76.

I hope that history will judge me as favorably as our people still regard me, because, as God is my witness, I honestly did the best I could. No more can be asked of any man.

On June 30, 1992, the traditional ceremony of political succession will unfold at the Luneta. The last time it was done that way was in 1965. I shall be there with you to proudly witness the event. This is the glory of democracy, that its most solemn moment should be the peaceful transfer of power.

Maraming salamat sa inyong lahat at paalam.

-Corazon Aquino, in her last State of the Nation Address, July 22, 1991.


photo from CoryAquino.ph

*

I have no words for this grief.

I woke this morning around half past seven to several messages containing the same news: Former president Corazon Aquino, icon of democracy and People Power, is dead. She was 76.

Upon getting the news, I went to work with my coffee in tow to get further ahead with captions. On Thursday, a few of my co-workers headed to Tarlac to visit the Aquino Museum to get a few photographs of Mrs Aquino. We agreed to finish captioning them ASAP. This was last night.

By 3:18 AM this morning, she was dead.

The fact is, we saw this coming. It was not sudden in any way; it was a year-long battle with colon cancer, after all. A few days ago we were even shaken by false news that the much beloved former president was dead. And honestly, I don't think any Filipino has been prayed for this hard ever.

But then, perhaps nothing could have really prepared us for this eventuality.

A few hours ago, I was watching the live sky patrol of Cory's hearse being transported from Heritage to La Salle Green Hills, where the public could view her until 4 a.m. tomorrow. Her hearse traversed Edsa slowly, as funeral hearses are wont to, and surprisingly, all the other vehicles gave way, which is just the rarest thing, and I think it's rather safe to assume the people driving behind Cory's hearse weren't grumbling but were rather proud to have been part of some informal entourage.

It just goes to show, what the Inquirer said in its editorial on Cory ("Eternal Flame" via inquirer.net) is true: "Unity is a rare thing in our country; we have it now; and adding to the feelings of grief is the wistful realization that it took the passing of Cory to reunite a divided nation."

President Aquino's passing marks the passing of an era -- if not the starkest mark of it. I will remember this as one of those distinct moments when I felt I aged significantly. I was born a year after her husband Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on that tarmac; in other words, right in the middle of an angry nation slowly inching toward a breaking point. God only knows what would have happened, had this country not seen a woman of Cory Aquino's strength and courage, or People Power altogether.

As a person working in the media industry, I feel like I owe Mrs Aquino for this freedom of expression that the Philippine press is currently enjoying. I have no words for the weight of this feeling -- of responsibility, of gratitude -- and to use a phrase I've seen somewhere, we can only use such small words for feelings so enormous.

There was an interview on ANC a while ago, where the interviewee says something about how we as Filipinos have been looking at symbols too long, and that maybe her death wants to tell us, Maybe it is time to look inside ourselves.

I think it's a challenge, and I think it is time to take it.

I think it's going to be a very interesting 2010 Elections.

whew july?

+ i don't know where june went, honestly. *shrugs*

+ though judging from my compiled twitter updates over at lj (hehehe) i think the following sums up what i think ate up most of last month:

- adobe cs3 and GIFPARTIES involving the children of skins. to wit:

eye!sx ftw!

- my sister giving up the apartment i've kept since summer 2004. the end of an era.

- aH1N1

- rilke's letters to a young poet.

- rain.

- the prescott twins (of course)

- pagasa getting it all wrong. all the time.

- my brother moving into pisay dorm and HIGH SCHOOL. us having to haul encyclopedia sets into his room.

- LIPGLOSS ♥

- third eye blind

- andrea's new hair ♥

- BLOCK REUNION!

- lily loveless on twitter (hihi)

- father's day

- old planners

- michael jackson, RIP

- saguijo

- annual midyear sickness FTW

- that gossip girl photoshoot. lord.

anyway, my lj was actually quite helpful. as long as i kept my twitter compilations ~private lol to keep from spamming other people's f-lists. hehe. but all in all, having written nothing notwithstanding (actually this is not true; i've written quite A LOT in june, it's just, ~irrelevant.) -- june seemed like quite a good month.

+ note to say: GOD I LOVE PASSION PIT. and BON IVER. and this NEW ROOM -- well, of course, i'd love anywhere so long as i go with you. ♥