The Difference Between Poor People and People Who Have Money

Don’t get me wrong: I know the value of money. You have no idea how much it distresses me to find out that the jeepney driver shortchanged me by one peso in the morning, more so when I realize that my fare back home is short by the missing peso. It drives me crazy. A few days can pass and that piso will still be hovering on the edges of my consciousness like stubborn mascara that won’t get wiped away.  The point is, I value money and I hate to spend any more than any thing is worth or else the missing pesos tend to haunt me in a rather nasty manner.

My mom apparently does not know this side of me. She believes that I waste my money on useless things like clothes and makeup (my closet won’t close anymore, har har, funny—not) without even thinking about it. Thankfully enough, she’s very liberal with my book money although she’s been grumbling lately (the shelf where my books are is getting full too). All I can say is that she doesn’t know that I’m all grown up now and earning some of my monies and painfully realizing that it’s not that easy. With that disclaimer, don’t crucify me for the following conversation between me and my mom. 

 
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Red Sunset

This picture was taken during a red sunset two weeks ago. When I was a kid, I read that red sunsets usually mean that there are thunderstorms lurking around. It wasn’t even raining then, but the past few days brought a lot of thunderstorms here in Cavite.

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Defeated

Right now, I am feeling suffocated from myself. I am strangled by my own ideas, my beliefs, my expectations from myself and everyone around me. I want to run from it, but I don’t know how and I’m not entirely sure if I should. This old quote never fails to remind me, however: strong people don’t run away from, they run away to. 

I’ve been feeling defeated the past few weeks. It might be because of my uninspiring practicum or just the general plainess of my life; it’s hard to tell, when it comes down to it. The reason why this is hitting me hard might be because no one is around to offer me emotional support, assurance, I don’t know. I need someone to listen to me, a good long day of it, when no one cares about the time. I need to listen to someone too. I guess the long and short of it is that I am lonely and I need friends. The virtual world isn’t good enough for this kind of shit anymore.

 
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Strategizing!

Kris has been a bit emotional lately. You can read all about it here, here, and here. I know right! He needs some sense knocked into him. So I was talking to him like, ten minutes ago, and this is how it went:

dlsuchou: you reckon i should still try contacting this, um, knees-melting girl i was talking about too often on my blog lately?
dlsuchou: "knees-melting"?! hahaha
lizette lanuzo: yes you should
lizette lanuzo: like, call her.
lizette lanuzo: be more direct
lizette lanuzo: "hi, i know this sounds weird to you, but i fell in love with you since we first met. i know im not piolo pascual or sam milby (god bless my soul), but i’ve been thinking about you non-stop and it would make me a very happy man if you agree to have dinner with me."
dlsuchou: wow that… that’s too direct!
lizette lanuzo: like that. it might actually work.
lizette lanuzo: but im serious
lizette lanuzo: like, 70% serious.
lizette lanuzo: call her.
lizette lanuzo: if she says no, then, move on with your life.
dlsuchou: ok my palms are getting sweaty even thinking about saying such things
lizette lanuzo: lol.

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The Stuff of Nightmares

He spat the words out and then walked little away. "You miss the whole point. The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men. I am myself covered by crawling creeping vines that choke me."

He laughed bitterly. "And that’s why I want to run and play," he said. "I want to be a leaf blown by the wind over hills. I want to die and be born again, and I am only a tree covered with vines and slowly dying. I am, you see, weary and want to be made clean. I am an amateur venturing timidly into lives," he concluded. "I am weary and want to be made clean. I am covered by creeping crawling things.

an excerpt from Seeds by Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
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Phone Pics Etc.

I take a lot of random pics with my phone. Usually, I just point and click, then I forget all about it. Well, it’s a wet Saturday morning and I’m poring through the contents of my phone and here’s what I got:

I know it looks uber weird, but it’s chocolate and I cooked it. Did you read the "Luffy" on top? I know, aww and weird at the same time.

 
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Conundrum

There are times when I feel like I own the world. I would walk around with an extra spring in my steps, thinking that I am better than everyone else.

And then there are times when I feel desolate and pathetic. Some small event or other happens which would make me feel that I haven’t really proven myself to anyone, least of all myself. I am mediocre, yet I expect the best from myself and from everyone else. Trying to deal with the conundrum adds to the desolation.

This is one of those times.

I Know It’s Late And This Is Not My Thing

Happy Mother’s day to my Mama.

When I was three, she bought me a lot of fairytale books. They had colorful pictures and big letters which I couldn’t read, but I was still fascinated by them even though I barely understood what they were about. These books eventually led me to believe that princesses have to be unbelievably gutsy creatures to survive until the "and they lived happily ever after" cut. I learned to believe that if I am going to be anyone in life, I have to have conviction along with the stubborness to stand by it.

 
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Here We Go Again: The Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs 2008

Last year, I have written about how the Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007 is a failure because most of the blogs in the list are not influential—they are merely popular. In other words, what was supposed to be a search for informative, credible, authoritative and (yes, the implicit, but not the only qualification) popular blogs which the Philippine blogging community could be proud of has become bastardized into a token popularity contest. The final list contained blogs with vapid and utterly useless content but with healthy traffic obtained from enthusiastic blogwhoring. If this is influence, I don’t know what a blog is.

The Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs 2008 contest by Janette Toral has been officially launched this month. Correct me if I am wrong, but the same mistakes from last year have been committed.

 
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People I Admire

I always find fault in people. Some would find it really annoying and offensive, but honest criticism always draws blood—so does birth, so does menstruation, so does hemmhoroids. Let’s just say that criticism is one of the less painful ways to find out just how human we are. Since I love sticking your humanity in your face because I love to celebrate it (ironically enough), I can be one of your harshest critics and/or ardent admirers.

Imperfections aside, passion is something I admire, in whatever form. It’s very important to me because it’s so rare in this century of caffeine-drugged, earphone-plugged, television and Internet junkies who have desires patterned after The Average Semi-Happy Human’s desires. No, I’m not talking about passion as in a pointless and mindless "love" for something (my belief is that you can’t love anything or anybody without understanding the thing or person completely). Passion, meaning loving something because you can’t live any other way and you know exactly why.

So why should you care about all this? No reason. It’s just that there are only a handful of people I seriously admire and I’d like to share with you who they are.  

 
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Anniversary

Exactly a year ago, around 7 PM, I was starting to fall asleep on a bench in Ortigas Park. The person I was waiting for was 45 minutes late. 

"Okay, fifteen more minutes and I’ll go home," I told myself. There was no reason to wait, really, and no, it’s not for romantic reasons that I did. I’ve never met him, but he seemed like an interesting guy online—only, he was forty-five minutes late and I had to go home to Cavite, which is three hours away from Ortigas. You can’t believe how much I was pissed off by then. In fact, don’t. Have you ever been so mad but were too tired to get THAT mad? It was more like that.

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