Till Our Next Meeting

this project turns out to be actually harder than i estimated. I guess I suck at math in general. shit. It's hard to be a full time student, part time writer and manage 2 blogs. even harder when youre stuck with one lazyass roommate who refuses to clean the dorm even though she knows its her turn to do the chores and the place is filthy already. oops wrong blog, i shouldnt be writing this here. I was thinking a week ago, Florence seems much farther now than it used to be. It almost appeared to be within reach 2 years ago because I actually was supposed to go there for my 18th birthday. Yet instead, I chose to celebrate my birthday with a big debut complete with all the candles, big dress and shiny escort. I also realized recently that I had never actually met someone who's been there. Well except for Jared, my dad's colossaly kind of a boss who told us wonderful stories about the place. He's the person whom I almost deem responsible for my being enamored with Florence. ...

(for November 22) I dont usually converse through text with people I don't know or haven't met but for this particular person I made an exception. Honestly I felt weird replying to a person who was a somewhat stranger. I mean, sure he's the best friend of one of my good friends, but still, I don't like operating on those terms. But he made sense and surprisingly enough he didn't bore me and drove me off to sleep. By the time we'd been talking for over a week, I felt like I had a bogus friend, a figment of my imagination that resulted as a way for compensating my lack of college guy friends I could talk to on a regular basis. And I don't know. there's just this certain thrill spilling information to a pseudo stranger, or someone whom you haven't met. I mean, what harm could it possibly bring right. He was, i mean is, taking up psychology as his pre-medicine course. He told me that he had a 10hour week schedule. Upon learning this I felt like questioni...

(for November 20, 2009) "Hello my name is Mr. Pagsanhan but everyone calls me Pagsi. I'm 82 years old and still a high school teacher like i have been for the past 50+ years." Here was the cutest man I had ever laid eyes on. His cuteness and jolliness instantly formed a huge smile on my face and yet by the end of his talk, my eyes were filled with tears. His talk by the way spanned for almost an hour and a half, like most movies. But no movie has ever made me tear up that many times in just one showing. It's like my eyes were turned into a faucet that was constantly being tilted to produce water. Only a few minutes after the faucet was shut closed, it would loosen again and let the water flow. I bet the people from the other side of the room were thinking, "What is wrong with this girl? The speakers keeps cracking jokes and telling funny stories and yet her reaction is the opposite of what is usually elicited after humor." Or maybe not since I bet more than ...

(for November 18 2009) Inhale. Exhale. Full lotus flower position. Inhale. exhale. Most people only know yoga as this leisure activity where you get your body into these bendy twisty positions, the activity which makes you do sometimes awkward positions but eventually will make you so flexible that you'll be as bendy and twisty like a pretzel. Can I just say for the record that I initiated practicing yoga not because I wanted to become like a contortionist and do all sorts of flexing extending with my body. It was only lately that I learned to see yoga in a deeper, more spiritual way. I've come to learn what I now know about yoga because of three people, Liz Gilbert, my Asian Civilation professor and someone I met recently, Dada C. Yep that's how I prefer to call him, although he doesn't know this. That's also how his name appears on my phonebook. He doesn't know about that either. Dada C is a monk. For their special sect a monk is referred to as a Dada while a ...

(for November 16 2009) “Hello?,” he said in a groggy voice. Immediately I understood that I had woken him up from deep slumber just to greet him a happy birthday. My brother is nineteen now. Two years more and he’ll be celebrating his debut. I know Im supposed to be blogging about someone I met but since it’s his birthday I decided to make an exception. Plus in the terms of the blog I did stipulate that I would also blog about people I already know if I learn something new about them or saw a different side of them for the first time. That qualifies as a “meeting” after all. My brother possesses something that I lack, an artistic sense. He is an artist of different sorts of media. When he was in elementary, he used to come up with amazing sketches and drawings. His lines weren’t the most straight ones, the pictures weren’t the most precise but he had this way of getting the message across with a hint of his personal style. He stepped on to college and took up Fashion Design and Merchan...

(For November 14) Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting a Taiwanese who was somewhat British. I say that because he's been living in London for almost a decade. He dresses like them, knows a lot about the country and London especially, and this is what I found most amusing: his accent is a mix of chinese and British. I swear! Before I actually met him I only knew him as the love of Daisy's life. I'd once talked to him via Skype but I don't really consider that as a meeting. He taught me funny sounding Phukien words like Mayo-la (I don't know if i spelled it correctly) which means I don't want, and she she which means thank you. I've got to be the worst student on the planet because he had to repeat it like 10 times before I pronounced it correctly and remembered what it meant. Lucas, that's his name in English. I wonder why he picked that though, but it beats the hell out of Leo which is my korean friend's english name. Lucas and Daisy's love s...

I realized I am three entries late. It's not that I haven't been meeting new people or writing about them. I have. I promise. I just haven't had the time to go online. So for the readers who've missed reading my entry, the end of waiting has come. hahahahaha. that was me fooling myself that I've increased my readership.

He drove me to Trinoma. He shared that he had only been a taxi driver for a mere 6 months. But driving wasn't his only skill. Manong was in his early forties but looked like someone in his mid thirties. A former bodyguard of a well-known Filipino showbiz personality, he knew and practiced several means of self defense. Karate was what he was best at and bragged that a single punch from him could probably knock a person down. He told me his former employee paid well but was a big pain in the ass. The boss used to curse at him all the time, especially when there was heavy traffic. He always became the sounding board and stress ball at the same time, and during his not so lucky days he'd be treated nastily. So after three years of forcing himself to bear with the devil, one day he stood up and walked away. Because even with a good sum of compensation, there's only so much a person can take. I noticed two letters tatooed on his hand. G and I. Apparently he also used to be part ...

First to arrive at the shoot, politely greeted everybody with a smile and brought along his stroller bag (as instructed). Ejay's the type of guy whom you may not notice at first but will inevitably grow on you. I met him at the photoshoot for Chalk yesterday. After he had won grand champion, or the ultimate winner of Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition 2 more than a year ago, my brother bet, "Give it 6 months, fame will get to his head and make it swell." Had my brother and I put a wager on that bet, I would've been richer by now. Because even with the fame, the continuous acting projects, he pretty much seems to still be the guy he was back inside the PBB house, only more good looking and polished. I found it very endearing that he still used with his PBB stroller bag, that it was the one he used to contain his clothes for tapings and photo shoots. For someone who won a million pesos and is payed not only for shows but also for brand endorsements, it's pretty surprisi...

If there's a ghostwriter, there's also what I term as a ghost-editor. Sara, a brilliant editor of a magazine, is someone whom I've been working with/for for almost 4 months already. Four months of being assigned to cover events, writing stories and exchanging emails and yet I wasn't even aware of what she looked like. Finally, on Chalk's 9th anniversary party, we finally met face to face. And I was right in betting that she'd be this lovely put-together girl who deserves to be an editor of a well established magazine. She was wearing gray high waisted pants and a darker shade of gray top, with her hair down and with her smile as the best accessory. I was kind of starstruck. kind of meaning, well I saw her but didn't know till after 5 minutes that it was the Sara, and so that's the only time I felt the striking feeling of jolt thing. haha But the surprise came much later. We shared a moment at the washroom/ powder room/ dressing room. We were trying out c...

He'd make a terrible Filipino newscaster, reporter or anchorman. Yet he'd be sure to make the show ratings zoom and rise. My initial encounter with Gil was a random day at the school pavilion. I was studying at the table next to his. But somehow I couldn't focus on the guidelines for taxation because I couldn't help but overhear his rehearsal of his lines for his report in Filipino. With incredible enthusiasm he delivered line after line, undisturbed and absent of any hint of a damp spirit despite the fact that he pronounced 80% of the Tagalog words incorrectly. What I found hilarious was his great effort to sound like a true Filipino, to speak believable Tagalog and then suddenly sounding slang just as he was gaining momentum. Our formal meeting took place at an entirely different setting. with bright lights, preppy clothes and fancy cameras to match the occasion. He was a finalist in our school pageant and I was one of the core group organizers. Despite my poor and bl...

Today I met a man with the voice of a lion, a humor of a standup comedian, the experience of a nurse and the knowledge of a scholar. Let’s call him Mr. J. Well that’s not entirely an alias because that was very similar to how informally he introduced himself to me, despite our relationship being very formal. He was a review teacher and I was a student, after all. Mr J is someone I consider powerful, having been able to keep a class of over a hundred students awake after several hours of lecture in a room so conducive for sleeping. There was something about the way he threw a blue umbrella to the side that gave me a hint that he was somewhat irascible (quick to anger). True enough, this man turns into a curmudgeon when roused with the topic of Philippine politics. He brought to my attention that a meager 260 pesos is the government allotted budget for the health of each Filipino for an entire year. That’s not even a peso a day, while a surprising 30 something million is the pork barrel ...

I was walking along the streets of Divisoria when a little boy surprised me from behind. He seemed like the typical street kid who goes around and begs for money. He was different though in more ways than one. First because he simply waited for alms. Second he had a lot of hope in his eyes. And third he followed me around even after I had already handed him a shiny ten peso coin. His name is something I failed to know with certainty. However, people in the area call him Badjao. Badjao reminded me of Peter Pan. He was wearing green shorts that were darkened to almost black probably because of soot from the jeepneys, from the dirt around the area and from numerous days of not being washed, and maybe because his mom didn't have enough money to afford Tide. Just like Peter Pan, he was a lost boy who found his way to a girl. He seemed to have lost his shadow and instead became the shadow of the girl he met. He remained close by. Had he been able to enter the stores, I guess he would hav...