The ubiquitous kikay bag

This is my trusty silver-colored kikay kit. I feel that it deserves a place in my blog, what with all the times it has stood faithfully by me.

This little bag contains my:

a) Neutrogena SPF 15 moisturizer
b) Maybelline concealer
c) Chipipay eyeliner
d) Burt's Bees lip balm
e) 3 favorite shades of lipstick (red and pink-Maybelline and wine-ALmay)
f) Maybelline cream blush
g) Bloom lipgloss (in melon)
h) Pond's face powder (it's the best)
i) Paris Hilton spray
j) Freshies wet tissues
k) sanity

The last item might seem like an exaggeration to some, but, in all honesty, the few times I discovered having left this little bag at home, I totally freaked out! Women can be awfully vain, some might say.

So sue us. Come on and try.

Answers

I often find myself caught off-guard by the questions people ask; mainly because a) I am, by nature, absent-minded and almost always adrift on some invisible cloud, or b) it is the nature of the questions themselves (not your average "how are you?" or "what's your favorite color?" sort) that get the wheels in my head to turn, and I mean, really turn.

Here are three actual examples (I've taken the liberty of answering them in this blog. Sad to say, I wasn't able to answer all of them during the time they were thrown at me. A blank stare was the most they got. Or, a puzzled frown, if they were lucky.)

1. Do you prioritize building relationships? (this question was from Sheila)

As a rule, no. I generally veer away from getting up-close and personal, be it with a colleague, a boss, an acquaintance, or a friend. Don't get me wrong, I do have friends, but generally, very few (and I mean less than a handful) of them are who I might call "close" friends. I put up a wall or, if I was unable to put up that wall at the start either because I was too busy or unaware, then I detach myself. In retrospect, this is something I've been doing since childhood. Practice makes perfect, as they say; so now, I could say that I've mastered the art.

Well, almost.

2. Tell me one weird thing you do when you get home. (from Wowoo)

Until now, I am drawing a blank. I don't have any unusual habits. So, this question is apparently useless. But interesting. I could probably try to come up with a list of weird habits, decide which one is the most unusual, and then put it into practice.

3. Is this what you really want to do? (pertaining to my line of work--several people have asked me this)

Truth be told, no, and there are so many reasons why. Among them are the following: a) the stress level is extremely high; b) I have to smile and appear agreeable even when I don't feel like it, which means I have to keep in check my moodiness and tendency to sulk and brood--which is very difficult to do because those things are second nature to me; c) my job involves a lot of critical decision-making and it just drives me nuts, at times; d) I go berserk when I get confronted with numbers and excel sheets; e) I seldom get the sleep that each of us rightfully deserves and needs; and f) I haven't read a single book in ages!

I could go on ranting but I'll stop, at this point. As the wise say, count your blessings, so, despite the complaints, I am thankful that I have a job. Which, come to think of it, is not such a bad one, after all.

(And here, folks, you can see the many colorful ways in which the female mind works.)

*My eyelids are drooping. Will turn in now. Good night.

Back in the Habit

No, this isn't about Whoopi Goldberg or Sister Act, sorry.

This entry is about me. Like most of what's in this blog, duh-uh.

Anyway.

This pep squad thing has done more wonders for me than I thought it would. For one thing, it has brought back my running (as in the sport) days. I woke up really early this morning and, voila, my first thought was: I have gotta run today.

And run, I did.

All the stretching and warm-up and dancing we've been doing this past week have taken their toll on my muscles and bones--I'm now hankering for exercise.

Truth is, the first practice session was kind of a horrific thing for me. I was confident when I said yes to the organizers, trusting that my experience as a cheerleader in High School and my having run a 5-kilometer marathon in College would mean it'd be a piece of cake for me.

Oh, but I was mistaken.

My moves started out really rusty and my entire body screamed "pain!" for a whole week.

It still does, by the way, though it's more tolerable now. The reaction was just further proof of how badly out of shape I was.

Or that my age is starting to show.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'd be able to keep this exercise thing going on.

For now, that is.

The Eternal Scapegoat

A guy gets dumped by his girlfriend and someone says "that's Karma." The man from next-door gets killed in a car crash and the neighbors say "it's Karma." China gets hit by a high-intensity earthquake and someone (like, um, Sharon Stone) says it was brought on by Karma.

I mean, come on.

If this Karma were a person, he'd be the most battered, most abused fall guy by now, and he'd have gone ahead and hung himself to death (a long, long time ago). So let's just give him a break.

Him, her, it, whatever.

It's easy to find someone--or something--to put the blame on when something unpleasant (from poverty to natural calamities to tragedy) rears its ugly head. Let's face it, shit happens and will continue to happen. The fact remains that there are and will always be things beyond our control that it would be futile to look for someone/something to point a finger on.

In the first place, do we even have to?

Bottom-line is: Nature will always be one force impossible to contend with and people will always make mistakes. We make "bad" decisions, give in to our "human" weaknesses, choose the "wrong" paths. And when the consequences of our actions come barging in for all the world to see, the world would say that it's Karma and that we deserve it, which is an outright misconception. But one that would be difficult to counter because we, being human, could be judgmental to a fault.

Until the world gets to understand the complexity of the human brain, until our scientists discover a way to halt the next earthquake or storm, until we all develop the power to see what will happen tomorrow, until we evolve into perfect beings, if perfect means faultless--it would be so much easier to point at something that would make sense to things that don't seem to make sense.

Hence, the ubiquitous line: "it's Karma."

DARK HOURS in the Morning

Today, I woke up early, had a breakfast of tuyo, itlog na maalat and rice. Not to forget, of course, coffee. Then I went outside, sat on my favorite chair, sent a "good morning!" text message to my dad, mom and brothers, sent text messages (oh, this age of text and text and texts some more!) to my team reminding them that we had a shift tonight, skimmed the pages of a magazine, put it down, opened Conchitina Cruz's Dark Hours and read it for the next hour or so.
I've read the book a couple of times before and, like every piece of good writing, it doesn't matter how many times one has read it: going through its pages is always a cherished experience. Poetry differs from Fiction (aside from its form) in that the former would take you longer to chew on fewer lines than the latter. And yet the richness would be the same.
Anyway, I did not mean for this post to be a dissertation on Poetry vis a vis Fiction, so let me stop right here. Going back to Dark Hours, below are some of my favorite lines (the beauty of which will be more appreciated in context with the whole of the poem, of course, so go get a copy of the book, now!):

1) Inside the story, she sees nothing but darkness. She is ungrateful for the luxury of despair. (from "Geography Lesson")

2) ...and the room is flooded with the radiance of the moment, a man and a woman in the middle of a sweet misunderstanding. (from "Smile")

3) on a typewriter the stammering pulse lone comfort of the wrist the alphabet falling

like seeds the white page blooming (from "I must say this about the city")

4) Across the city, a man turns from a corner to his street. There are too many keys in his hand and not enough doors to open. (from "Now and at the hour")

5) What is a shadow? It is the self without a face or a name, all outline and no feature, the self on the verge of being erased. It is the incidental child of matter and light. Look how it spreads itself on the ground, weary but weightless, unable to leave a trace.

...Is it possible for this not to be a story of disappearance? (from "Disappear")

6) If I keep still enough inside this shadow, it is as if I'm not here. If I keep still enough, there is no proof you are not here with me. (from "Inside the Dark")

*Lines #1-6 all taken from Dark Hours by Conchitina Cruz.

Well-read and Well-dressed

Sunday mornings find me at my most laid-back state. A cup of ginseng or red yeast coffee and a book or a magazine are my best pals at this time of day, this day of the week.
This particular Sunday in question, things were just as they should be: I, emerging from the house in an old, yellow shirt, cup of coffee in hand, walking toward the glass-topped table, where lay a copy of the April issue of Preview and A.S. Byatt's Imagining Characters, a bookmark sandwiched between two of its pages.
I sat down, musing, eyeing the magazine and the book, lying casually beside each other like old friends enjoying the early morning sunlight. It occurred to me how this partnership might strike some as unlikely--the fashion magazine with its emphasis on the superficial and the Booker Prize Winning author's book on literary criticism of Women's Fiction (which could just as well be a dissertation on Feminism, by the way).
I sat down and stared at them and tried to weigh which one was more important to me--a silly thought, really, but one which crossed my mind, nevertheless, like an epiphany of sorts. I knew very well which one I'd rather lose over the other and which one I'd cry over if I ever had to lose it. Still, the fleeting question breezed by and I realized as I shook my head and grinned wryly, that I wasn't the nerd that some people (from High School, in particular) thought me to be. For me, intelligence dressed in mismatched clothes (a striped top and checked pants, for example) is less interesting, in the same way that a smartly-dressed woman without brains is ugly.
If you can quote Oscar Wilde but know no better than to wear those hideous white flats with purple pants, then it's time to look in the mirror and ask yourself why you never paid attention to what you wore. Or, better yet, grab a magazine from the bookshop and take a crash course on the difference between a pump and a mule, what a tulip skirt is and what season it was from, who Stella McCartney is aside from being a Beatle brat, is Yohji Yamamoto a he or a she, what does tweed look like and will it look good on you, etc, etc.
But make sure you don't forget who it was that said that to think is to be, or where the Leaning Tower of Pisa is, or if Pompeii is a person or a place and who Coleridge is. And brush up on those fractions--you just might need them on your shopping spree next sale season!

My Oscar Buzz

Let me brag and say that I have watched four of the five Academy Award nominees for Best Picture. I know this might not mean a lot to the geeks (and I use that term with admiration) out there, but hey, this is me talking, and I've never been that much into movies until fairly recently. I have yet to watch Michael Clayton, but here are my two cents' worth on the four that I've seen, so far:

1. Atonement- I might go so far as to say that the movie is better than the book. Ian McEwan's prose should be lauded for its intricateness but more often than is acceptable, the words and paragraphs tend to go over the boundaries of tightness and spill out into overstatement. The plot is riveting, though, and the movie succeeds in capturing both the excitement of the story and the gamut of emotions felt by the characters. Freed of the excessive expositions, the film is held in check at the seams and the actors' portrayals blend well with the setting, the plot and the themes.

2. Juno- please see review in previous blog entry. Thanks.

3. No Country For Old Men- the film's victory over the others is well-deserved. I am guessing that the chances of the regular movie-goer liking this film is low, and that should be warning enough that this is definitely not your "typical" blockbuster hit (will it be a hit, I wonder?). It has almost no score, very quiet except for a few, paltry but well-written lines here and there, has lots (as compared to the minimal script) of gunshots, and pools of blood staining the desert sands, the streets, the floors, the sheets, the clothes. The film completely overturned my expectations in that the man I was rooting for during the chase unceremoniously dies in the middle, the protagonist never captures the villain, who disappears without a trace, leaving me positively clueless of his whereabouts, or what it is that fate has in store for him. Javier Bardem is spectacularly creepy in the movie and his acting should be reason enough to make the film worth your time.

4. There Will Be Blood- My only take-away from this movie is that Daniel Day Lewis can act. And I mean, really act. And really, that is all I have to say. I guess I'd have to watch the film one more time. And then one more, after that.

Conan and Jay on the Rewind

And The Writers' Strike is finally over. (I felt the need to write it as a proper noun--it's become such a phenomenon over the past months, as most everyone will agree, and considering the effect it had on the American entertainment industry).

The great Conan O'Brien, without his writers but armed with his Harvard degree in History and Literature, managed to make do with slapstick, stupidly innovative gadgets and laughter-inducing brouhaha. His ever-reliable wit, not to mention his tall, lanky frame and cartoonish face crowned with that pompadour-like red hair, pocked with those beady eyes, that longish nose and those strip-thin lips (I have a feeling that one day, not long ago, he suddenly had this urge to strip off his mouth and sketch on a new pair of lips!) got him through those trying times.

And Jay Leno, undoubtedly my favorite among the three late night talk show hosts (I'm not much for David Letterman--there's simply too much sarcasm in his humor that leaves a sour taste), remained his old, hefty, understatedly funny self. He didn't have to resort (much)to antics and stuff; though without Conan's comical looks, his, uhm, sizeable chin and spectacularly down-to-earth (oxymoron, anyone?) way of delivering his punch-lines more than made up for the absence of the organized script.

So these two hosts have yet again proven that they are forces to contend with, and that they could stand on their own, much to the satisfaction of the late night talk show addict.

Reposted from my previous blog(s)

July 18, 2006
Nothing, Whatsoever

When I was a whole lot younger than I am now (yep, I feel old), my favorite weekend pastime was sulking and giving everybody that get-out-of-my-way look, barging into my room as if the rest of the house was on fire, plopping into my unmade, books-and-papers-and-whathaveyous-filled bed and reading myself to death, vegetating like a piece of broccolli (i love this veggie, by the way) left out in the sun until my eyes would droop and so would the rest of me (how convenient that a pillow is nearby and I can just get lost in dreamland and meet Eustacia Vye on her way to meet The Native, or, maybe, just maybe, the great Holden Caulfield himself). Whew. Long sentence, wasn't it? But where was I? Oh, Holden--no, dreamland? I forgot. Totally lost track of my thoughts. What was I writing about? Sulking, I think, or maybe something to do with being young? I am typing, typing, typing and I don't care if I am making sense, or not. Are the punctuations correct? Is my grammar okay? Whatever. The point is...well,the point is that I don't have a point. I am rambling and how I started would tell you what kind of a person I am. Or maybe not. I mean, the last book I read was like a week ago, and it's taking me ages to finish the great Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I remember reading Slapstick when i was thirteen years old and not being able to make heads and tails out of it. It was my dad's, by the way. Yep, the great Dad who boasts of not having gone through the Hardy Boys and going straight to Moby Dick, from whom I got my copy of Faulkner's Light In August which is still in my bookshelf to this very day, pages tattered and browning away and browning some more, and all. Where was I, again? Oh, yeah, Slapstick. Fast forward to seven years later: One of my favorite English teachers, Prof. Thelma E. Arambulo (she says she hates her first name, but a heck of a woman she was!) tells us, her English majors-- and by the way, Contemporary American Lit just rocks!-- that the great Kurt would write in bits of paper and compile them into a piece of work that is so incoherent it would have your eyes glued on to the pages until everything would make sense. Where are you, James Merrill! Theodore Roethke! You Beat poets! Adrienne Rich! Omigawd my punctuation is so downright sloppy but I don't care I'm writing can't you see. I wonder, why this difficulty with Slaughterhouse Five? I mean, I read The Hours, Mrs. Dalloway and An Invisible Sign of My Own (which I bought at a booksale for a hundred and ten bucks and turned out to have been autographed by Amy Bender herself!) in a span of, like, four days. Is it just laziness? Is my brain deteriorating into something awful? Is it Vonnegut? The answer to this is: I don't know. I really don't. And I still don't know what my point is. I have no idea what shape this entry is taking. And, really, why is it called an entry? Because you enter the words into the keypad and they pop out into the screen? Who first thought of calling it an entry? Did it have, in any way, a likeness with how James Joyce started using the word epiphany to mean something else other than the feast of the three kings (were they really kings?)? I am so lost. Other words/names to think about today: canon, pathos, incoherent, James Thurber (where in the world can I find a book by him, aside from the UP CAL library?), lunch (or breakfast first?), sleep. Yep, sleep. I think it's lack of sleep that got me started, lack of sleep that made me go on, and on, and on. Stop. This is so much fun I'm dozing off.

October 27, 2006
From Billy to Randall

Correction: It's AIMEE, not Amy Bender. Sorry for that. I happened to look at my bookshelf this weekend and saw the mistake I had made. A whoops! moment, right there.

Slaughterhouse-Five was a real blast! Yes, I have finally finished the book, and managed to swallow Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in between. Now, S-5 (that's what I've taken to calling it) is about this guy named Billy Pilgrim who's become unstuck in time (sounds so glamorous, doesn't it?) and gets abducted by the Trafalmadorians (hope I spelled that right) who, by the way, are a group of aliens who have taken a keen interest in the human race. Now, what the book implies(or what I have gleaned from it, whichever) is that Billy began to have these hallucinations (they could just as well have been real, for all we know) after he survived the 2nd World War (why does this phrase always have to be in caps?), the climax of which (in Billy's experience, at least) was the bombing of Dresden, Germany. Slaughterhouse-Five is the name of the structure which housed the Americans (Billy included), and which miraculously escaped the bombing (yep, it was supposedly that disastrous).

Now, what am I doing? I am boring myself to death. I didn't come out here to give a summary of the book! No way! Go and read it yourself! But why should you, right? Why the @#**#$% should you read a book written by some guy (sorry, Vonnegut fans. No insult intended, none at all) who had nothing better to do than write a book about some crazy war survivor who had, in turn, nothing better to do than walk in and out of time zones?

I am so incoherent. This is what non-writing (is there such a word?) does to people who used to write like writing was breathing. And so I have taken to coming up with patches of script that I am hoping would turn out to be worth this page, anyhow. Or your time. Now that was downright smug. I mean, am I really writing this with the thought that someone would even care to read it? But then again, there's always the zeitgeist, the invisible audience (reader, whatever) one has in mind when one is writing. I mean, come on, give me that luxury, at least! The only person I'm pretty sure would read this is the friend who gave the book to me. So, there.

Well, back to Dresden. Reading about the bombing made me remember Randall Jarrell, a contemporary American poet who was a fighter pilot during the WWII, who wrote about what it was like to be up in the air and just fire and fire away at a piece of geography (it mustn't have seemed real to them, at all, just a part of the map they were ordered to annihilate). That there were people being killed, living beings being shred to pieces by the ammunition raining like fire from the sky-- these would hardly have occurred to them, at all, at least while they were at it. What Jarrell's poem ("Losses," that was the title) seems to be pointing at is the unreality of what was happening, to them who were no more than just pilots with an assignment. What was real enough must have been what came after, that moment when the task is done and they land and hear about it from the news, look at the photo spreads of the ravages of war, the deaths, the shattered limbs, the ashes. And then they say, or think: Hey. That was me. Us. I did that. We did that. And then the sadness. The ache of guilt. And everything else.

I have no idea how to end this. A period would, I think, have to do for now.

So there.