Gimme a Break. Please.

Since I decided to switch gyms and will discontinue my other gym membership by the end of this month (today!), I’ve been sampling the different amenities of the former gym (let’s call it the Blue Gym) and have been gym-hopping, comparing dressing rooms, TV monitors and lock systems. I will miss the convenience of having a Blue Gym just around the corner, from where I live, where I work, or wherever I may be, but the other gym will save me a handful of hundreds that can go towards other stuff. Something cushy I hope or something to take me awaaaaaayyyyy…

Somehow the predictability of the routine calms me: getting up in the morning, getting to work, pounding on the keyboard, making calls, riding back home. But too much is already BORING. I am craving something different. I need to look forward to something new.

Before, I would incorporate (time) pockets of joy into my routine. Always there would be a departure from my routine – something unplanned and surprising. But because of the workload and/or culture, the deviations from the norm became inconvenient and sometimes irritating.

Am I slipping in ornery manang-hood (as opposed to cool manang-hood)? I’ve been so crabby one time that I told off a boy asking for a peso at the LRT. I am not proud of that.

I need to take a break.

10 Random Things About Me

Got tagged by Nor to reveal incriminating stuff... here goes:

1. When I was 6 years old and we were about to transfer to our new home, I instructed our helper to call my mom "Donya" and me, "Señorita". Epekto ng LVN Pictures.

2. I want my own megabookstore.

3. Even if I like dance, whenever I watch, I fall asleep in 30 minutes.

4. I joined all the academic contests in our subdivision and won. This was partly because I was never asked to be sagala or prinsesita during May.

5. I don't like motorcycles. Or rather, I dislike idiots on motorcycles. They're a deadly combination.

6. I'm torn between freedom and stability.

7. My childhood crushes were Vic Vargas and Shaun Cassidy.

8. Book that changed my (HS) life: Norman Vincent Peale's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"

9. Was a speed reader.

10. Was a secret Duranie in the mid-80s. My walls were plastered with Duran Duran posters.

I am tagging the following interesting friends/ relatives: Shemai, Joyjoy, Rakel, Precious, Salve, Sheila, Cecill and Pam

Me Want Pizza!!!

Commuter Rant

It’s been so hot lately that keeping cool is getting to be a chore. One thing being, I’ve started bringing the car again – at least until the Shaw MRT Station – so that I can arrive at work on time.

For a whole week, I have been tardy and it sucks. Yesterday morning, I waited for the FX Shuttle for one whole hour (add that to the other hour I spent just to get out of our village). It is made worse because nobody can explain this traffic phenomenon in our area. Traffic should have eased up supposedly since it is summer.

I commute to Makati because it is environment-friendly, (relatively) low-stress*, and economical. I don’t have to worry about crazy drivers (me included), hungry cops, parking spots and other responsibilities that go with bringing your vehicle to work. All I have to do is wait for the FX, alight, pay my PhP40-50 bucks, nap for 30-45 minutes, para at my stop, walk a bit and take another FX to the office building.

Now, because of the erratic traffic and shuttles, I am forced to take the car. At least I am not taking it all the way to Makati, not just yet; although I am tempted. Especially when you’re sardine-d in the tin can together with the great washed of this city. Anyway, I always make it a point not to ride in the female carriages, especially during rush hour. All that estrogen and PMS-ing women make for catty and outright bullish behavior.

What I will not miss during these long shuttle rides: the waiting period and the loooooonng lines, being seated next to the driver and being nudged every time he shifts gears, being seated with a hefty co-passenger who decides to own his space, being seated with 3 other hefty co-passengers in the middle seat, sweaty skin touching sweaty skin (and sweat forming under one’s clothes).

* on days not riding the MRT

And since I’m on a roll, may I just ask, why oh why, have I attended my 3^rd wake in a week??!!

Changes

Over the weekend, a Singles For Christ friend enticed me to join a talk on single life and urged me to write about my 5-year plan, what I would like to accomplish before I'm 40.

I feel I haven't really done much so I have to do a lot of things. Cramming eto. Travel to North America, fall in love, raise a family, build my house(s), and of course, the most urgent, clean my room. Not necessarily in that order, but you get the idea. I need a lot of emotional growing up to do.
Five years to an 18-year old is not the same as five years to someone of my age, 32 . Time just whizzes by, that before we know it, I'll be 40... and the tragedy in coming up with a list like that above, is that I'll be that age and nothing to show for it.

Why the angst all of a sudden? Well, it's the realization that you plan and you plan, may visualization pang nagaganap, tapos, biglang something will be taken away. Routines will be rearranged. Your life as you know it will change.

I just learned that a batchmate's husband died. He was only 36. 3 kids. My batchmate is my age.

Early yesterday, a friend texted me that a colleague from the CCP, Sid Hildawa, passed away.

Two deaths in a matter of hours.

And I haven't even fallen in love.

Such selfish thoughts. But I guess it's human nature to always relate to things personally. What's in it for me? Magiging ganon ba ako?

Hay praning.

Anyway, look at things from a different angle na lang. My batchmate's husband brought to this world his children, who would continue and build his legacy. My batchmate got to spend time with a person she loved.

Sid Hildawa, meanwhile, was a busy person. I just learned that he was an architect. But he is also the head of the visual arts department of the CCP, a visual artist, a teacher, a writer, a poet. Andaming ginawa. I stalk him over his blog and during an event, I confessed that I did this and attempted to impress him by reciting the intro to his poem I liked very much. Did this freak him out (like I know it would if it were another person)? Nope. Because he's also nice guy.

Here's the poem:

How to Be a Door

Hinge your life on something
as steadfast as a jamb
but know which way to swing.
(Those who swing both ways
belong between the dining hall
and the kitchen.) Hold your breath
when you are locked, inhale deeply
with every knock that isn't answered
with "come in." Be still
when there is no reply from the innkeeper
of all things. Your name is Portal
so with your body keep out sickness
and greed, and builders who do not know
how to hammer a house with quiet words.
Let sorrow pass, and youth, and the goldest giraffe
who bends low to nibble from a lady's hand,
that all may enter who have traveled worlds
to be astonished; weary now of boulevards
that look out to the sea but never wave;
finally stepping out of solitude into shade,
shaking hands with all they meet inside, all
who have come before them, all who must dwell.

(-from the 2006 collection, "Building a House," revised March 12, 2007)

More of his poems here.

Hopefully, cheer will peek through these pages tomorrow.