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It's 7 am and I should be asleep. Typical. So Christmas has passed, whoop bleepin' do. I'm sick as a dog. Every time I return to Manila, I get sick as a shit. Must be I hate the place so much.

We'll work backwards from here.

Correction, I'll work backwards. I don't know who else reads this.

Congratulations, you have not worked out how to get back from that seething pit of anger. I don't know if its right to call it emotions, I never seem to have them. Messr. El Roboto. I just push it under. Not healthy, I commented to a friend that I'm jealous of my sister and her drinking binges. Friend laughingly offers to go drinking with me. It's a sweet gesture but I wisely don't take her up on it. Last time I went drinking with friends I started attempting to speak in drunken filipino. What the hell. Also I get damn maudlin, I can't take that now.

I walked to fort boni from school, about three times now. It's my escape, the mindless footsteps bleeding anger. All roads lead to home. I wish I had a camera, I want to document this. Third time doing this, the concrete feels firm under my feet like it will hold, at last. The first time I let my anger unscythe I ride raw hatred over scarred streets. A place, might have been special because of a girl but I carry my boiling anger past unmolested. The green fields and dark night conspire to remind me of better times in Singapore.

God I miss my buds, they just had a primary school reunion. I know, I just chatted to them, pretended I was all right. I lied to them with a straight face but it seemed right at the time. There was a meteor shower too.

Second time was almost better, more punishing. I take the longer way, I almost die of exhaustion. It was exhilarating. All the while I keep hoping for the stupidest thing, a glance of her.

The third time is the last day of school. I proceed by the direct route, leaving bewildered friends as I seem to walk towards nowhere. I feel like I'm headed nowhere. I know that back at school I've let myself fail three subjects intentionally. I could have fought the feelings of dejection but I didn't I let myself sink to the lowest mental capacity. Happy days it feels like secondary school again. I should have been able to do better. Fuck it, my psyche commands. The least I did was ensure that I didn't take a group down with me. Seems like I can let myself down but not a group. I feel like a dipshit.

And I exacerbate my feeling of defeat. I carry it on my shoulders, my dead blank stare. I have mastered apathy as the cure for the dull aching despair. Nothing goes right, a disaster of my own crafting. I had hoped for release. That my beloved night would have answers for me. On that walk I find questions that but mirrors my despair.

I find myself on a road. The dark pools around it and the world beyond in the light seems artificial, a mirage. For that moment I own that negative space, before a car clumsily casts its headlight in wild abandon, an attempt to drive away my darkness, I own it. It feels perfect but I must move on.

I don't know which is more painful, that the girl didn't acknowledge my invitation that night or that I found that I can shrug off the physical manifestations of defeat so easily and yet the emotional scars remain. Neither helped heal me I think.

I'm sick but I refuse to sleep. I think I fear something there now.

Douglas Coupland. Saw his latest book, for some reason while writing this I read up on the experience of someone being waterboarded. This incongruity struck me as Coupland-esque. I don't know why, but I'm compelled to write it down. I think I'm god damned chuffed to see myself as being worthy of a Coupland narrative. It's crazy but fuck it. Also, too much swearing in this post.

Fuck it.

Went to Baguio. Didn't get the girls anything in return for their Darth Vader. Sigh, I am a scumbag. I'll get them something from Manila I guess. Came back sick. Full damn circle.

It never really goes away. The last week was marked by it's never ending emotional toll. The rage and pain seems to have subsided but I think all I'm doing is repressing it, it feels like it lurks just below the surface, waiting for my weakness to unleash itself. I can't get myself to do anything critical.

The pain of betrayal was supplanted by rage and then by a perturbed stillness. Questions of guilt, of why, of wondering if I could have done anything about it. And now the strongest amongst us is asking for the hardest thing.

I want to give my mom what she wants, I know she hurts more than any of us could ever feel, and has more right to be unforgiving. But I'm unable to forgive yet.

6 years of cheating. fuck you dad.

It lives! It lives! Problem was in power supply, phew. Dodged a bullet there, wasn't a problem with my main hardware.

My brain is kinda feeling a bit weird with the typing. I'm trying to learn the dvorak layout but my monkey fingers are fighting it.

God still hates me. For some unknown reason my PC isn't working. Fans spin up but then die. And then restart. And die. Sigh. Can't gather the energy to work up a good amount of swear words for my situation, so I'll have to make do with "Well. Shit."

Last sem before I go on to take my internship. Oh how the spectre of adulthood looms. Well, not really. I've recently gotten quite obsessed droolfest over BrickCon '07 photos posted on Flickr despite the fact that I haven't played with my lego collection in forever. I think I'm pining for my childhood or something. My minor subjects have given me a sudden sense of disconnect with my past. Filipino Rhetoric and History have left me with the disconcerting feeling of looking down at the ground beneath my feet and seeing instead an inexplicable void. They are parts of my past, things that have made what I am in the distant past and not knowing much about them has made me feel like I'm standing on the thinnest of clouds with only my ignorance keeping me afloat. Idunno, rambling here.

I've taken to carrying this book of poetry from my sister's library, a book that she won from a poetry recital thing in her course. It's titled "Six Filipino Poets". I realized that the book was initially published in the 1950's as the introduction stated that but I only recently realized that the book says that its published in 1955. A fact that I find so hard to believe as the book is in such good condition.

I'm researching it now. I have a sinking feeling that I'm going to feel guilty for not taking better care of it. My 2D anim prof, Sir Gilbert saw me reading the book and he commented that one of the poets used to be his teacher at UP. I think I found the poet's son's blog. Incidentally, Taking back the word Filipina.

I think I wanted to write more about the profundity of carrying around a book with more than half a century of history but I believe my words will be an epic failure so instead I will abstain... holy crap I carry an $81 book like its nothing. *commits seppuku* Is it bad that the realization hits me more when I find out the price? I'll post one of my favourite poems from the book since I can't seem to find it online:

Love Poems For Vi
By Oscar Zuniga

1. Room with April Rain

Once I was the punctual lover, the tenant
of your room,
Whose walls are yellowed by other men's
sulphurous dreams.
I was desire, the essential need to your
dancer's body
Which took passion as wine pressed from
summer fruits.

But now you are no longer what you were,
the beloved,
Who traded hours of sleep for moments
of harried love.
And yet I could not let you go, not while
the heart
Still remembers the room fragrant with late
April rain.

2. Remembrances

Now we are strangers in this room,
A sheltered world thick with mold of love;
The old arm-chair, the pillowed couch
Are hollow graves where dreams have died.

We dare not speak: harshness of speech
May flay the flesh with memores;
The lamp between us, we are as shades
Mingled with the night's flowing darkness.

The heart having felt your indrawn cry,
I flee the room, its walls quivering with hate,
Once outside the gate, remembrances of love
Accompany the jar of closing doors.

3. Red Rose

Then it was over, I had become a stranger;
My name a bitter food to a woman's
hunger.

Now a woman with a dancer's body
Walks teh streets of loneliness,
Lost to the memories of youth,
Exiled from home, love, and day.

She feels the night's dissolving darkness
Seep through her love-strained flesh;
Hears the silvery sound of wedding bells
Once set in an April that never came.

All is past: it's over now: in the morning
She meets a man with a red rose in his hand.

4. Graveyard

Since I can only love you when April violets
bloom
From your fingertips and your tongue of rotten
dust
Turns into white sand, I can only love you
when death
Walks into my house with green leaves
in his mouth.

My hate is a man's dying dreams
That creep through the shades of moonless
houses;
My hate is a concubine's melting kisses
That taste like ungathered poppies.

I should then slay you in the mesmerized waters
Of a darkening moon, amid the green,
Choking weeds in a graveyard with salty walls,
With the spine of a naked fish for knife.

I feel inadequate after that.

The pulsing beat that resounds in my head is the mere echo of that which pounds in my chest.

I'm afraid of stopping and realizing something heartbreaking, something that I already know.

I'll never grow old. Not a positive trait. There is a lack of emotional maturity that makes me wonder why I get so serious about girls.

Emerging from a tunnel, it's like a new world. We enter in the rain and emerge into an arid world.

I'm back to my old insomniac behaviour. Got up just to write this post down that has been festering in my mind since I don't know when.

Went to watch plainsunset's 2nd ever Manila gig over at Mag:net Bonifacio where they played alongside Urbandub. It was awesome to finally see them live after listening to their music obsessively and somehow intertwining their music with images of Singapore, despite never having seen them play before.

Sister and I were going crazy and melancholic and giddy-happy when they went up to play. My sister more so than me but god did their song "River" make me all maudlin. Talked to plainsunset and got my sister's "the gift" cd signed for her. It felt good to feel myself dropping back into singlish while talking to the bassist. It got us wanting to go "home" even more.

I still find it strange to think that you get more mosh pits back in Singapore gigs than over here, I would have thought it to be the reverse. Oh, and saw Surreal's lead singer with them although we didn't accost him for an autograph. Kinda sad to find out Surreal is breaking up though.

---

I was doing my philosophy homework and I got to four pages of mindless answering when it struck me that I've expended more words on that piece of blah report than I've ever spent on the current crush. It's depressing somehow and a situation I want to remedy.

What's not so depressing is having two new books to read! I got a bit disheartened that I couldn't get Douglas Coupland's jpod at the book fair after pining after it all this time. Got Eleanor Rigby instead but it's alright since it's been a great read so far. Other book is Flowers for Algernon, chosen by my sis. Reading again has got me wondering, will I ever be known at school as "that guy with good books"? I mean, I'm resigned to the fact that I'll never be known as "that guy with good looks" but the former would be such an awesome reputation to have :D

Although I'm quite sure my sister will be quick to point out that all my good books, in fact, are hers. :p

The book fair was fun, just wish I had more time. Apparently we missed you at the book fair Mia! Our driver says he saw you there, you weren't at the RoD booth when we went by. Saw your prints, they're lovely! Wish I could have seen the books though, they sound rather pretty!

---

Douglas Coupland is surprising me yet again. I fell in love with his writing when I first picked up Microserfs at the library, the book that affirmed my belief that geeks can have love too :) Then I read Girlfriend in a Coma, a post apocalyptic book thats very humanistic which was a very different read from Microserfs. I've read a few chapters of Shampoo Planet and it surprised me again with the lead character's pretty cynical worldview.

And this time around Douglas Coupland is writing a heart breakingly lonely novel that I have to put down once in a while to recover emotionally from. Though the main character, Liz Dunn, is a female I can just see myself in her shoes and its just so painful to imagine the loneliness. I didn't really flinch at all when I watched the anime Welcome to the N.H.K, a series that gets bandied about in anime circles as the one that gets geeky loneliness but something about the way that Liz Dunn is written hits so close to home for me. And then Coupland has scenes that recall the creepiness of Girlfriend in a Coma which sends shudders up my spine.

I look forward to finishing the book. It's shorter compared to his other works but none of his other books has had me as emotionally sympathetic to the character as I am right now.

First things first, belated happy birthday and a hearty congratulations to my sister Lystra. She's 21 which is practically ancient! Also she was named as one of the outstanding writers of her batch in De La Salle's lit program, an achievement that simultaneously makes me proud and jealous of her.

The new Blogger archive style has opened my eyes to an interesting pattern in my blog. I fervently posted in my blog the first year, tailing off on the second and then it sees a drastic fall in the last two years. Heck, this post makes my posting this year much more proliferate than my writing last year.

When I think back on my emotional status, I think I see an inverse relationship between how much I write and how well I feel. If one trusts this relationship then one is forced to conclude that I am feeling crappier about this year than the last :p

Which is not to say, that I am feeling crappier. I'm just attempting an amusing observation at 5 in the morning. And. Failing. Probably.

Lystra's lit status is kind of cool as I get to bask in the reflected glow of literature, something I love quite dearly. As she mentioned in her blog, I am jealous of her growing bookshelf filled with books of excellent quality.

And I think it also gnaws at the part of me that wants to be a writer, that piece of me that against all logic attempts to string words together to describe beauty that I never know. I hardly know the world and love and most of all people and yet I seem to be under the illusion that I can be its scribe. It's been far too long since I've written anything I consider good.

Like I remarked to a friend, I want to write. I don't quite know what to write about but I will write. Lystra once related how she finds it difficult to place herself amongst local writing because she has no idea how local culture is like how it does not have relevance to her world view and thus her writing can hardly be considered "local".

I think I fall into the same fate except make the scope of the not-knowing-a-single-thing-ness (5 am diction is bad) anything about the human condition. Sure, conventional wisdom says "write what you know" but I fear that I will fall into the trap of writing a Mary Sue character. The story I'm working on has me worried about that.

I just don't know.

---

I am puzzled over my feelings for her. Reading my entries about my previous crush makes me wonder why I am not breaking out the angst over my feelings for the current crush. It just bothers me that I have not invested myself in her as much as I did previously. I place such importance on words but yet I hardly make attempts at beauty when I write about this girl in contrast with the previous girl who made my blog appear... filthy with my excreable attempts at romantic words.

At least I took... something today.

I'm pretty damn sure Wednesday was a good day for me, I'm just puzzled at how I could not know it's a good day then. I think I suspected it but I couldn't appreciate it as the day progressed.

I was given a couple of offers for work, both a bit in the same field but one guaranteed money for doing basically crap jobs while the other couldn't guarantee but offers cooler opportunities to do something I care about. It brought me uncomfortably close to that question of whether you'll work for job satisfaction or for money. I've never considered that this situation would be a dilemma for me. I've always thought I would be able to choose job satisfaction without hesitation.

It was kinda flattering to think that my programming skills are in demand, no matter how dull I might consider them to be. Well, as compared to the trained students in my school anyway. I think Ronald knows the elite CSIT students. Irunno, kinda intimidating when I think of going up against them.

I start having a minor attack of nerves later that day when I couldn't find anyone else to go with me to watch a movie with the girl. I get to the cinema and I choose to leave a chair between us (her sis was with her) and at that time I thought I was doing the right thing. I don't know, no idea how anything stands right now, I'm just playing this blindly.

But the day after I kinda hate myself for not seizing the day. And then I keep waiting for the bad day that is surely attendant to myself after a good day like that. I don't know why, I'm not superstitious but it just feels right for some sort of balance to exist in the universe.

Finally got the layout finished, after fighting blogspot's templating engine all the way. And then it turns out that the problem was PEBCAK. At least it sharpened m debugging skills some.

It's still not completely done, sidebar items need styling. You will bow before my rule damnit! After this, I've gotta move the stylesheet to an external one and then figure out how to make a stylesheet switching widget. And then a del.icio.us widget. And oh, upload my alternate page layout.

Which is less girly, thank you very much (I'm giving you a "look" cookie) (that look probably is less intimidating and more i've-got-gastric-problems but eh)

So I am finally changing the blog layout, after all these years. Mind the mess, layout overhaul is only halfway done. I'm supposed to have a sidebar and for some reason the blogger template engine keeps mucking around with my naming conventions, the fruit frakkers. Nevertheless I will soldier on, hope to finish this by Wednesday at the most.

Oh, and my main motivation for the overhaul? So I can have tags in my damn posts. del.icio.us has turned me into a tag whore.

I will burn in hell for that bad pun.

And the post titles just keep getting more and more melodramatic. Next thing you know it will be "zomg i am dying inside my skin zomgmyheart" or somesuch title.

Been having hardware problems in a bad way. First my mobo (I think) decides it doesn't like its own PCI-E port and goes and fraks up on me. My system is running crippled now, it won't work properly if I install the video card drivers. gfg. And then the rain decides that I like it wayyyy too much so it goes and sends a power surge down the frikkn phone line which fries my modem. So now I can't even use the internet on my own PC. Argh.

Setec Astronomy. An anagram for "Too Many Secrets". It feels like that now and its annoying me. The consequence of having friends? Idunno if I will ever truly wish that I was a loner again but seriously, being made to promise contradictory things is breaking my brain. Also, I am rather transparent so, dunno, hard to keep secrets when people guess it so easily from me. Argh. Also, seeing both sides of a matter is a horrible curse. Blah.

It's kinda nice for this post to be one long blathering on about my problems rather than being any overeager attempt at writing some kind of life-changing prose. Been doing that over the last few posts, I've just noticed.

Jeff Buckley is breaking me. Winamp (on my computer) says that I've played Jeff Buckley's "Last Goodbye" at least 30 times now. It's just such a fitting song for a situation I find myself in. I hear that the girl I like is leaving, soon. It's... I don't know. I thought I've been making better progress at becoming a better friend to her recently but all of a sudden I find that perhaps it will be for naught.

I keep telling myself that I have no real right to be sad that she is leaving beyond the somewhat superficial level of friendship that I have with her (if that sentence makes no sense, its 4am now). But, idunno. Theres a part inside of me that just so desperately wants to have the right to say I love her but no, there is no call for me to go around saying that yet.

This is our last goodbye, Kiss me, out of desire And not consolation.

Anyway, stuff. I don't know why I even bother with obfuscating her name in this blog. Anyone who reads it would already know who I am talking about. Wonder how long I have until she leaves, haven't really talked to her since I found out that she is leaving.

A restlessness beset me just sitting in the cafeteria doing nothing, as usual. Just one of those moods that strike me at times. Maybe its just cause I had seen the girl or some such nonsense (ugh, here I go again with referring to my crushes as the girl) but it gripped me with such force that I had to walk down Magallanes just to calm myself down, even if I had class in 30 minutes.

The idea of fleeing into my own solitude holds a great appeal to me.

I think these walks will also eventually be the end of me. The sensation of walking, the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, well it stops me from thinking rationally. It evokes romantic ideas too big for me and yet which I so desperately crave. The kinetics bind the body to the soul and the will of my soul, my body would want.

Sheesh, this is really getting melodramatic. I've lost my knack for writing, having not set any words of consequence down in my notebook recently.

And while I tread on that oft walked path I had a vision of walking those roads less travelled. I would just continue walking till I get out of the city, finding a winding road to the provinces and I would just continue my flight down south. I would abandon all, my education and friends. Money would be discarded cutting the tethers to home and it would ultimately lose its meaning beyond getting me to my next destination.

I will stay in a town for a week or so, long enough to find its heart but never long enough to feel home for finding home will mean the end of this flight. I'll discover myself on the road and then when I reach the sea I'll turn around and make the long walk north and maybe go home wiser. Or I might just keep walking northward bound until I disappear, from earth and memories of my loved ones.

And while I know I will never find the courage to do as I had seen, I will cherish this waking dream.

The title of this post doesn't really have anything to do with the contents of this post. It's just a phrase that has been clinging on to my brain for some reason or another. One of my prof's told me that blogging is like shitting on your underwear and then turning it over and wearing it again.

I like it

His description of blogging I mean. Not the shitunderwear thing.

It's 1AM now. The week has officially begun and I'm glad for it. The last week has been rather bad for me. Nothing tragic though. Just. Bad.

Earlier in the week, I found out through my parents that my calculation of how long I'll still be in school was off. Instead of my projected one year and a sem, they tell me that according to the school, I'll be stuck in there for another two years. Damn it.

It's not that I'm doing badly in school, its just that my choices are coming back to bite me. Hard. Should have taken full loads like my classmates instead of taking it easy some sems. It's not just the length of my stay in college that is bothering me. It's the feeling that it is compounding on my earlier failures in life, like the stupidity in high school. So frustrating.

Add that to the general loneliness that I felt, hardly ever seeing the girl that I like, the feeling that I've let her pass through my own inaction. I think thats the theme of my feelings this week. How I've let my life drift off course, that if I had only acted sooner, more resolutely, I might not be so far off from the path that I want my life to take. It's emotionally rough, this feeling. It makes you sullen, unable to pull yourself together to extricate yourself from this situation.

And then to top it all off, I go ahead and lose my bag through my own naivety. It's not so much the material possession that I mind losing, its the memories that have gone into that bag. I've let my friends scribble little drawings and sayings all over its surface, making them a part of me for as long as I have that bag. Or at least it feels that way. But no, I had to go and trust that my bag is safe in a classroom with people. Grmble.

I also miss my drawing supplies, my Tria and Copic markers, various mech pencils and my notebooks. Dear lord. Please don't let whoever stole my bag read the cheesiness that are my notebooks.

And to top it all off, I saw the girl on Thursday. It should have lifted my mood. It actually did, for a while. But then I realized that no matter how happy she might make me feel, I do not believe I have the ability to make her happy.

And that feeling utterly sucks.

Ah well, another week, another chance to frak up my life some more.

For all the independence of thought that I attribute to myself, I find myself so easily influenced by media that I consume. In rereading Catcher in the Rye, I find myself using the word 'crumby' a bit too much in my internal dialogue. I guess I'm just another one of the herd. Media consumes me.

Firefox's American spellcheck dictionary just confused me over the spelling of 'dialogue' so badly. Still haven't completely switched from British spelling to American bastardised english. Just installed me the Britland dictionary. Its like a live blogging here!

Went to school with weird expectations today. I don't think I was expecting much but I was expecting something. I really ought to stop imagining non-existent conversations between people and myself. I'm pretty sure its bad for one's mental health. I thought I was safe from an action of mine that was spurred on by desperation. Turns out that no, no I'm not. I think my face drained when I heard that. I'm pretty sure it'll be awkward if I see her tomorrow.

Forgot my cellphone so I couldn't get picked up from school. This part isn't that interesting except for sitting in Jollibee and reading Catcher in the Rye which, idunno. Reading a book in a fastfood restaurant while you're reading seems to be pretty scaggy (a stolen word from Going Postal) behaviour to me. There is just an element about it that is so wrong. Also, not getting fetched from school led to a conversation in the toilet while I prepared to do number 2.

Yes, you did not need to know that.

Anyway, due to not being fetched I missed the last shuttle out of school and I had to walk from one end of Magallanes to the other. Not that significant a distance but I walked it alone. Usually this hike would be undertaken with friends. I don't have anything against them but walking alone gives me such a feeling of freedom and, paradoxically, less lonely.

During the crappy years of high school/secondary school I used to walk from the school to my house, laden with my heavy school bag and I'm pretty sure it was at least 2 kilometers.

My solitary walk evoked these memories and I had a fantastic idea. I would walk home all the way from my school. I entertained this idea quite seriously in my head as I realized that with almost all the schools I've studied in, I've been able to walk home to or from there.

Tonight I only walked part of the way. I think I badly want to do this now.

This week has been kinda rough emotionally. Don't want to get into specifics, just want to note it down here in my long neglected blog.

The fourth years of the overnight family has graduated. Good riddance I say. No, not really. Their presence in APC will be missed greatly.

Hopefully the first small step into updating this thing regularly.