After, Not Before

I grew up thinking I was ugly. I was dark and my hair was thick and curly. I had eyes that were too big and a nose that was too flat. I used to be tall for my age until I stopped growing by Sixth Grade; by then I became another average-height Filipina, skinny, gangly and awkward.

It didn't help that my brother had all the physical characteristics that made him look like an artista—fair skin, high-bridged nose, long eyelashes, height. When we were younger and my mom would introduce us to her officemates, they'd always exclaim, "ang guwapo naman ng anak mong lalaki! Artistahin ang dating!". What I'd get is: "naku Beth mukhang matalino itong anak mong babae ha?" Very nice.

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Shiny Black Balloon

I dislike kids. They’re mewling little things with fully intact egos, and that means they still believe the world revolves  around them. Right, I don’t hate them. Just this mild dislike—me being a girl at this point in my life when my maternal instinct supposedly awakes, I guess it’s weird.

Maybe I dislike them because they require too much patience. That’s why I never wanted to be a nurse or a teacher; I just don’t fit the mold, and I don’t think I even ever did when I was littler. You know when you’re young and you want to be everything? I wanted to be an astronaut, a broadcaster, a writer, a corporate lawyer. You’d notice these professions have very minimal, if any, to do with kids. I don’t think that’ll change any decade now.

 
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While Walking To Work

Since I'm too lazy and shit to write anything to day, and because I don't want to scare any potential readers I might have with my long, drawn-out, semi-emo posts of late—I present to you…stupid pictures!

Now don't get me wrong. I don't have pretensions as to being a good photographer, or even as a photographer in the first place. I have a stupid camera. The only pictures I am really good at taking are of myself. The rest is a point and shoot sport for me because I'm so self-centered like that, I don't care about what everything else looks like in the photos I take not of myself. Heh.

So anyway, these are the pictures I took while walking to work from the MRT this morning. I had some time on my hands because I was 20 minutes early yay! To prevent myself from getting bored and all, I sat my ass in front of Strata 100 and started clicking blindly, hoping some pictures at least turn out nice enough for a blog post. And here they are. Not so nice, but heck, beggars can't be choosers so shut up.

 
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Sandwich!

Today we will be talking about sandwiches. I don't know why but sandwiches seem to be…ubiquitous in my life right now. I get this impression because I don't like sandwiches very much; I don't think they're real food. A sandwich is something you wolf down because you're in a hurry. It's something to fill the void of eating real food—some sort of poor substitute, to my mind. Also it may be that my mom would always pack my lunch box with sandwiches when I was younger, and we all know how sandwiches get nasty when left in an almost airtight lunch box during a long, hot day of learning one's ABCs and Maths. The sandwhich gets nasty. So do I.

Hence the trauma. I would try to avoid sandwiches as much as possible. During my lowest moments as a human being, I would throw away a sandwich Mama made for me, wanting to spare my dogs the indemnity of eating such a nasty object. If my memory serves me right, the last time I did this was about a month ago. My mother packed me a sandwich because I forgot to eat breakfast, which is really nice of her seeing as she hates waking up before the sun rises. "Kainin mo yan ha, titignan ko pag-uwi mo!" she says. "Yes mam, hindi naman ako kinder no," I smart mouthed. So yeah I forgot all about the damn thing until I got to our gate sometime in the evening and fear struck my heart, fear of my mother. She can get quite stubborn sometimes about the smallest, insignificant things. I had a feeling that the sandwich issue is something she will fight for to the pits. So I did what any logical person should do if said person were in my shoes: I threw the incriminating sandwich to the bushes beside our house.

"Ano, kinain mo?" she asks promptly, as I nonchalantly opened the door. "Yes mam," I beamed.

 
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Ate and Kuya Waiting Shed

Last night, I got down the commuter van, hoping to buy a bunch of those two-peso siomai sold across the street. This particular breed of siomai tastes particularly badly, but I'm a sucker for them stuff so to hell with taste buds and salmonella! It helps that the sauce is not something I wouldn't mind drinking for an indefinite period of time. 

The long and short of it is that after crossing the street (this should tell you that I must REALLY want that siomai because as mentioned here and here, I don't like crossing streets very much. I avoid the dirty chore as much as possible), there was no siomai vendor. Downhearted, I made my way to the bus stop that would take me home. I wasn't really paying attention to the world due to my latest disappointment. I noticed a man waving his arms at me, arms; normally I wouldn't even glance because I don't care about strange people waving their arms at me, but I think this person knows me because the fact that I'm half-blind at night is totally top secret. Or maybe not.

Anyway, the man turned out to be Kuya Waiting Shed. He and his wife, Ate Waiting Shed, used to sell sandwiches and some juice in the, what else, waiting shed. The bus drivers would usually buy from them while waiting for passengers to board, or the passengers themselves before going to wherever they were going, or just plain bored pedestrians wanting a bit of talk. After the long ride from Manila, my former Spouse Equivalent (okay, ex-boyfriend, if we have to be sophomoric here) would visit them for a while and buy some juice. He'll usually handle the conversation, and I'd just smile and nod like I paid attention.

 
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Why Liz Is Stupid

I don't feel like myself right now. It's probably me just waking up on the wrong side of the bed, or it might be the fact that I just more or less slept the weekend off like a big fuzzy useless sloth…I don't know. But I don't feel right today, and I'm garbed in black from head to foot to attest to that fact. To whom it may concern: when I am in all black, I am in a very foul mood.

But anyway, let me tell you about the boo boos I go through in my everyday life. Or to be more exact, the things that I get confused about over and over and over again, for some reason.

 
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An Interesting Story

It was quiet and cold in the bus I took to Manila yesterday. As usual, there were commuters who were standing up, trying their darndest not to look at each other all throughout the trip—it's some etiquette, I think, not to look to closely at each other's misery. I stole a short glance at them to assure myself (of what, I don't really know) and turned to the window. It was a nice sunny morning. Since its summer, not a lot of people are on the streets as they were busy hiding from the glare of the albeit weak sun.

The bus was coming to a turn, gears grumbling, grinding, yawning, to the left.  I stare out of the newly -cleaned plexiglass window. Slowly, a lone person traversing the street came into view. She was walking in a relaxed gait. Her expression was a little blank (which is normal for people who walk through familiar territory) and serene (which is not normal for people who walk through busy thoroughfares), disturbing. She was naked.

 
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Animal Farm

The easiest way to reclaim your self-esteem is to feed on another's. Fortunately, the world will never run out of inferior people—there will always be someone more pathetic than you are, someone less talented, someone weaker-willed. Does this sound mean? A pig named Napoleon once said: all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. It is mean, I guess, but it's also true.

 
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Yogurt Is the Absolute EVIL

The other night, my mom got home from the grocery and gave me a cup of yogurt with yummy strawberry chunks. This is all very well and I was enjoying myself while watching Lupin (yes, I watch Lupin and all those other corny blah during prime time when I get the chance). I never really was fond of yogurt in my younger years because I always imagined it tastes like sour piss. I think I have in fact tasted piss when I was a kid. So sue me.

 
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Lights

Aurora at the Mall of Asia

I look out of the train window and find the world condensed into a few dots of moving lights. The cars, jeeps, buses and trucks below wearily inch their way towards their destination, and they bring their lights with them until they fade away into the distance, replaced by new lights.

 
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Happy and Comfy?

People almost always know how to solve their problems. But sometimes, the solution is too good for comfort, hence they ignore it and keep on trying inferior solutions which may only solve the problem partially, not solve it at all, or even make it worse. This is a pretty awful mindset, but it exists.

Everybody is a fan of comfort and it is probably one of the harder things in life to give up, because it takes so fucking long and too fucking hard to get it. ‘Comfort’ is subjective—a comfortable relationship for me involves me being able to fart in front of the guy like there’s no tomorrow, or pick my nose, or drool sticky icky-smelling saliva, or talk about the questions of the universe over a bunch of fries and floats. If I can do that with you, then I will find it very hard to leave you. That’s comfort for me. For you it may be doing your Fries-in-Nose demo in front of the girlfriend and not feel self-conscious at all. Depends. And I don’t say that only because it’s a safe answer.

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Well What Do You Know

It is easy to want to be this or that, but it remains to be seen whether we have the power to change into what we would like to be. If such power be lacking, then our pretensions cannot appear otherwise than ridiculous and futile.

-From the short story A Character in Distress by Luigi Pirandello (1857-1956)

It couldn’t be said better than this. There are nasty names for that those whom Pirandello pertains to; ‘pretentious’ is such a nice adjective compared to them. Posers, nag-feefeeling, epal—after taking that risk of having the world’s collective eyebrow raised against you, you realize, too late, that that acid green shirt makes you look pathetic.

Check a mall. Any mall. The average Filipino wears a pair of jeans and a printed shirt. Sometimes, though, we find special people whom the entity above has forgotten to gift with the sense of fashion—heck, even propriety! You can’t have possibly missed that mini-skirted, massively thighed creature strutting a little ahead of you. Or were you looking at that fat guy wearing a muscle shirt? Ooh, first one who finds a peeking panty wins a prize!

 
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I-Don’t-Bite Nice

 This is a picture of me taken by me one lazy afternoon some weeks ago. My beloved and beautiful friend Mary Photoshopped it and voila! We have this. Thanks dear, I love what you did. It makes me look nice for once. And nice, as in, 'i-don't-bite' nice. Kisses!

Tall Storyteller

Manong, wag!

Brain dead at about 9.30 last night, I heard a short scream from a girl sitting behind me on a bus. A tallish man in a blue shirt and a cap bolted down the bus as it came to a sudden stop. I looked around in confusion and found the other passengers doing the same, trying to figure out what happened within the five seconds at the start of the scream to the blur of a body jumping off in a rush. 

A busybody asked the girl—what happened? Cellphone stolen. What model? 6600. Good thing he didn't have a weapon with him. "I have a cut," she says.

 
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Brownies and Coffee for Breakfast

Got home 10 PM last night. There was some accident along Coastal Road which caused horrible, horrible traffic. The commuter van I was in detoured to Las Pinas- Zapote—sucks. Traffic along those parts too!

I went home all wasted and shit. So 'yet' did come, quite early. I was tralalala-ing along, with not a care in the world, and guess what! Some asshit flicked his cigarette just in time to burn a small spot of skin near my left wrist! Yays! I shouted 'leche' and he gave me a stupid look that said "hurnh sorry miss I'm the small-dicked descendant of King Kong bwahaha-ha-ha". Some other moran heard me shout 'leche' and shouted 'che' at me. Demented world we got yo'. Very.

Got to the office today just in time. Made some mild coffee and ate some brownies for breakfast. Which totally reminds me! I haven't eaten lunch yet! Steel will get mad at me if he finds out. So Steel wherever you are you are so not reading this. Because you're not here yadah yadah blah hooey. Shit man I've degraded to babble. But wait I have always been babbling. So's the rest of this apeshit crazy world. 

Supposedly Wasted But Not. Yet.

Yesterday my best friend Manoy celebrated her 18th birthday. Yes, it's 'her'—her real name is Manelette, but I was the evil bitch who gave her the 'Manoy' nickname when we were in first year high school. In my defense though, I reasoned out that being called 'Let-let' during prep and 'Mane' in elementary makes one sound boring and quite faded. And too mainstream. So Manoy it was, and maybe forever it shall be. I rather think she likes it though.

On to the party. There was no program for her debut, really. She just asked us to drag our asses to to Hardin ng Postema in Tanza, about twenty to forty minutes from where I live. I went to the place with her since I didn't want to wait for my other high school batchmates to slowpoke their way to the resort. I mean, they're the sort that when you say 6 PM, they hear 8 PM (and even then you're having your lucky day). So I just left early and we got there about 5:30 PM, even though the call time was at six. Guess what I did first bitches. Buffet table yihaa!

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