Monday, November 29, 2004
home
Home is my four-poster, antique, Vigan bed that creaks every time I roll over, with the faded discolored pillows that are too flat in some areas and too lumpy in others. And let's not forget the beat-up stuffed dog I got for my 8th birthday. To this day, I can't fall asleep without that dog on my right side.
Home is the gentle sunlight seeping in through the blinds in the morning, coloring the backs of my eyelids pink, and the soft golden morning light that bathes our living room, making it look like a bowl of light, at 7am when the house is quiet and asleep.
Home is Ananda, always one of the first to be awake, bright-eyed, and babbling, gurgling, and whining for her breakfast, and smelling like dried milk, baby sweat, and baby powder.
Home is breakfast with my mom, sharing the newspaper which she always gets to first and talking about anything under the sun, the sound of sizzling oil in the background as breakfast is cooked.
Home is my dad calling me to go down from my 2nd story room down to the living room, to look at a funny e-mail in his computer, even at the most inconvenient times like when I'm about to take a nap, or when I'm in the bathroom.
Home is Nino dropping by in the afternoon from the gym, the smell of his last shower on him, water seeping down from his hair to his shoulders, and smelling sharply of cologne. I've come to associate the metallic smell of water, and of cologne with big warm, comforting, welcome-hugs before lazily plopping together into a pile on the sofa.
Home is the sun-set that creeps in through the bars of our tirasa windows, casts it's presence on the floor in golden beams of light, lingers for an hour, before slowly departing, leaving no goodbye.
Home is a rainy evening with the cold wind blasting through our screen-covered tirasa, where I take one of those rare moments to curl up on the sofa with a blanket and watch a DVD.
Home is dinner in at our tiny kitchen table, all 5 members of the family squeezed in with the adopted members who are over at our house every night: friends, neighbors, and cousins. We laugh, share stories, tell dirty jokes, yell for ice cream, and always end up lingering for a little too long because it's always hard to leave such good company.
Home is curling up on the sofa with Nino in the warm lamplight of the living room after dinner, rubbing our full stomachs, and watching our Arowanna named Joanna swim lazily back and forth until we both fall asleep.
Home is my sister Erica, and our next-door neighbor/ adopted sister Gina eating junk food, and cackling late into the night at the kitchen table.
Home is one last pre-bedtime snack with my little brother at 1 AM, a bowl of cornflakes, cheese and crackers, and stupid jokes that become funny because wer'e so sleepy.
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Friday, November 26, 2004
Thursday, November 25, 2004
simply low-lifes
Since my maid had just sprayed my room to kill the bugs, I had to spend half an hour watching TV with my sister in the other room. While waiting for the smell to fade, I watched my first episode ever of "The Simple Life". Dear God! Thirty minutes of my life down the drain watching those two brats make money by acting like a**holes.
Watching Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie totter around in their micro-mini skirts and bleached hair and listening to them babbling in their high, ditzy voices, spouting out one crass/obscene/offensive statement after another made me realize that entertainment comes cheap nowadays. People enjoy watching egotistic, lazy brats trying to be cutesy by flaunting attitude problems? No offense to fans of the show, but I simply couldn't take it. People like that actually exist?!
I noticed after awhile that the show can be broken down like this:
1) Paris enters.
Paris' imaginary voice-over: "Hi I'm Paris, and I'm cute, and tall, and leggy, and I wear short skirts, and I'm hot."
2) Nicole enters.
Nicole's imaginary voice-over: "Hi, I'm Nicole, and everyone knows I'm not as hot or as pretty as Paris so I act rude and offensive so I can get as much attention as she does."
3) Nicole says or does something crass/obscene/offensive. Sound effect comes on.
4) Paris giggles.
5) Repeat sequence till end of show.
Even before I ever saw the show, I already despised Paris Hilton. Her one substantial contribution to humanity is a sex video. Other than that, what else? The world record for having worn every conceivable shade of pink in the universe? I won't even start on Nicole.
Okay, so maybe I am being a little harsh. Television always screws things up anyway and at all times, what we see on screen is very, very far from reality. So why do they let the media portray them like that? Do they think it's flattering? Are they going to wake up one morning fifty years from now and feel horrified over "The Simple Life"?
Aack.
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sleep, at last
Harassed. I've been harassed. I've been home from a long vacation for less than a week and I feel like how I did during that last week before thesis deadline in senior year: sleepless, irritable, resentful from old issues I tucked away once during a time when I didn't have time to feel resentful.
Been dealing with personal problems, as well as problems of the pettier kind which, when taken together, snowball to aggravate the former. One of these petty problems is my neighbor's early morning construction which thankfully has ceased. I wrote them a very factual, objective, formal complaint, calling on their decency as next-door neighbors to be considerate of those in their vicinity who do not usually awaken early. All the same, I slept on the sofa that night just in case they didn't pay attention to my letter. I woke up with a sore back and ridden with bug bites. I think my sofa has fleas. They did start construction at 9:30 am though, so they took my letter seriously.
Today there was no construction. I rejoiced because that means I can now sleep for an entire night, the first time, in my own bed, in a week. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! The bugs have been eating me in my sleep though which is strange. Several of my fingers looked puffy and deformed today from the bites.
Now that I can actually sleep normally, I hope my head cools down and I start feeling better in general. I've been so emotional and I get angry easily. I wake up angry sometimes (but I know that's from the construction). Fatigue is really my biggest weakness and my biggest happiness-zapper. My mood has been known to deteriorate along with my energy level. Ask any person who has ever worked with me on long strenuous projects.
I have a hundred, thousand "racket" I have to fullfill from this month, stretching to next year and I need all the positive energy I can muster in myself to get it all done. I'm very excited. I might be a working person again for the first time since I left MYX almost a year ago. I took a long break. It was good. Now I'm ready to sink my teeth into something new.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
hyperblogger
1-
- Doing their best to conceive all demanding children.
- Crazy about being able to lovingly serenade each other sweetly.
- Are the perfect match.
ianiceboy
Ya hear that?! I don't know about the children though.
2-And thanks to that quiz, I learned how to make hearts ♥ Wazoo! ♥♥♥
3-Within the past 3 weeks, I've been on Malaria vaccines, Cholera Vaccines and Penicillin. I probably now have no living organisms left in my body. I am as sterile as an un-opened pack of hospital gauze.
4-In my next life, I want to be cute, tiny, and Japanese a la Puffy AmiYumi.
5- I have to shake off this feeling of having just arrived from a long trip and actually begin life. Get off the internet, Ala! Go to the gym!
6- New item on my Christmas wishlist: Eraserheads Anthology CD...er... I think that's what it's called.
Adios!
Monday, November 22, 2004
i'm so mad i could kill
I HATE my next-door neighbors. I've written a hate entry about them before and it begins exactly like the previous sentence. I live beside and Opus Dei Seminary. My bedroom window faces directly their building which means that in my house, I'm the one who really has to live side by side with them. And no, my reasons for hating them have nothing to do with religion, or anything personal for that matter.
They have this construction going on, see. It seems that their structure is perpetually undergoing renovation or repairs of some sort. It happens about once every two months. And what really, really, REALLY pisses me off is that they always start hammering things, and sawing wood, and chiseling cement walls at 6:45 in the morning.
GODAMN!!! 'Scuse my French but I haven't gotten a complete night's sleep since I got home last Wednesday!!! I mean come on!!! I was always puyat in Africa and now I'm still always puyat here at home! Not everyone is up and about at freaking 7:00 in the morning!!! Punyeta! Picon talaga ako!
Can't they be responsible neighbors?!
Every morning I wake up to the sound of them hammering roof tiles. It's a very rude way to awaken someone. I always wake up in a fury and impulsively yell out my window for them to shut up and that someone is trying to get some sleep. I know they can hear me because they stop hammering for 5 minutes before they get back to work.
Of course, even if they did stop completely, I'n already so angry and frazzled that I can't get back to sleep and I end up feeling tired through the whole day AGAIN!
To top it all off, I'm the most noise-sensitive person in this house and I can't sleep in any other room except mine because all the other rooms in the house face the street where noisy tricycles and pandesal vendors go by every morning.
This morning I was awakened at 6:55 AM by what appeared to be either a drill or an electric saw. I have half a mind to start banging pots and pans at 3 AM tonight just to give them a taste of their own medicine!!!
Better yet, maybe I'll just write them a letter. With hopes these good Opus Dei priests take action and start being a good and concerned neighbour. I swear, they make me want to be a hermit and live in a cave so that I don't have to put up with neighbor's noisy construction!!!!
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Saturday, November 20, 2004
my Christmas wishlist
If I could only get one thing, it would be this:
A Wacom Graphire3 G630 drawing tablet. Haaaay! Imagine the endless possibilities! Better web-design! Art works! Flash animation! A small graphic design business perhaps. My friend Val was asking me to design her website last night, not a blog, but an honest to goodness business website. It made me realize that my life is indeed heading in the direction of graphic design, whether I choose to take it seriously or not. I don't know how this love for it came about. But because of it, I've become a certified geek!
Or, if Santa is feeling especially generous, he could get me this!
A Wacom Intuos 3 drawing tablet. It's the newest series from Wacom but I imagine it would cost an arm and a leg. Or would it? I know there are a couple graphic designers who read my blog. Please share some customer reviews with me on both products!
I'd also like a new chip for my Magic Sing. Hahaha!
And a Mac Powerbook g4. Now that's wishful thinking. I've been contemplating selling this iBook. But as Nino would say, upgrading even though it's unnecessary for your needs is a vice. So I'm thinking of saving up for a dekstop G4 instead and keeping Monica-that's my iBook's name. I named her after Monica Bellucci. She is my baby.
But to speak of simpler things, I'd like a copy of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.
I would like the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman even though it is overplayed. I still haven't read all the books.
I want gym-wear now that I'm a gym-goer.
I'd love my own web space, registered under my name, with one year's worth of the rent already paid for. (Geek! Geek!)
And of course, some make-up would also be nice. And shoes. And dresses. Hehehe.
I just wrote a long-ass post about my Africa trip. GO READ!
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Thursday, November 18, 2004
the gods must be crazy
Finally, after 2 weeks and 4 days, I am home from my trip. I walked through my door, burnt 4 shades darker by the desert sun, and covered with bug bites. My maid welcomed me, my brother hugged me, and Ananda looked at me like she wasn't sure if she had ever seen me before, and started wailing when I went near her. Two weeks of being gone must seem like an awfully long time for a 5 month old baby, at least long enough to forget who I was.
I was home! I was so happy to be home, with my siblings, and my niece, and our Christmas tree, and my boyfriend who came over with a bunch of yellow roses. Yay!
My trip to Africa was a busy one and a fruitful one. I don't even know whether it is possible to write about all of it. But I will try my best.
I have my Tito Butch and Tita Ollie to thank for this trip because they invited me along. We were also with my lolo, my Tito Jiggs, my little 8 year old cousin Jamie, and his yaya Me-an. We later on met up with my tito's daughter Jeanette in the Seychelles. But Seychelles comes later on.
The bulk of my trip was our Safari in Botswanna and our stay in Zambia. A safari is pretty difficult to prepare for. From Gaborone (which is a city in Botswanna), they fly you to the camp on a very small plane, which is why they don't allow you to bring suitcases. They require you to pack a duffle bag not exceeding 12 kilos. We also weren't allowed to wear clothes in bright colors while we were out in the wilderness, not even white, only neutrals.
Then there were other things to prepare for, like illness. The African wilderness is a malaria zone, and a few days prior to the trip, we were already on oral vaccines, to be taken once everyday. It was this medicine called Malarone, which had the most terrible, terrible side effects like nausea, mouth sores, head ache, cough, fever, diarrhea, stomach ache, decrease in level of liver performance, insomnia, anorexia, and NIGHTMARES! I'd always take the Malarone right after dinner, and more than once, I awoke in the middle of the night with a slight fever, nausea, a congested throat, a killer head ache, and shivering from a nightmare. Every night, my dreams were strange and very vivid.
Needless to say, I cannot wait to be off this pill!!! I still have one more to take. :-(
Johannesburg, South Africa
This is where we stayed over night before leaving for Botswanna. We didn't get to go around much but we did see lots of beautiful Jacaranda trees, and Nelson Mandela's house. It's a very clean and modern city, and it's chilly like Baguio in the summer.
Okavango Delta, Botswana
Botswana has it's towns and cities, but we stayed in a place far away from civilization. A series of plane rides took us to the Okavango Delta which is a lush oasis in the middle of the Kalahari Desert. This is where the camp was located. Though we were surrounded by trees and rivers, we were still in desert and thus experienced desert air, and desert sun. It was scorching and arrid in the day time, but pleasantly chilly in the night time. I had a slight nose bleed the entire time I was there because I wasn't used to the utter lack of humidity.
In the desert, sweat didn't even have time to manifest on my skin. It just evaporated straight away and the only way I could tell how much water I had lost is when the dehydration would sink in. It's so dry there that once you step out of the shower, you're dry in a minute even without a towel (except your hair of course).
Jao Camp, Botswana
In Jao we stayed in "luxury tents" that were elevated maybe 7 feet off the ground on stilts. The walls were made of olive-green canvas but the inside looked like the nicest hotel room ever. It had a balcony overlooking the river, and an outdoor shower that made you feel like you were bathing in the forest. The water came straight from the river and was 100% clean and drinkable!
On my first night in Jao, I woke up several times in the night in total fright because I could hear scratching, snorting, yowling and these terrifying growls all around me. It turned out to be a family of baboons living in our tree overhead instead of a bunch of wild animals like I initally thought it was.
They had the loveliest staff who really made us feel at home. This is Kidy, one of the serving ladies. I loved her smile and her gentleness. The women in Botswana are so beautiful! They were built curvy, volputuous, and sensual with very pretty eyes and smiles, and such rich, smooth, dark skin. Some of them wore braids, and the others had their hair cropped close to their scalps. It's so different from our own standards of beauty where we like our women pale, stick skinny, and with long straight hair.
Everyday we were all up at 5 AM for a quick breakfast before hopping unto the land rover for a game drive with our awesome guide, Frank Mashebe. He is the best guide ever! He knows so much about every single thing and he was a fun and happy guy. There he is driving in front with me beside him. If I ever go back, I'd like Frank to be my guide again!
All the guides we met were like super boy scouts! They could identify all kinds of animal tracks, bird calls...even animal dung. They could tell how long ago animal tracks had been made. They were all sharp-shooters with a riffle, could make fires, hunt food, knew which plants were used for which, and had sharp senses... in other words, they were like wild animals themselves except they were humans. :-p They were also walking encyclopedias. They knew the behaviors, hunting patterns, mating patterns of every single animal and they would talk about them like they were their friends. Amazing!
There were alot of elephants in Jao. In fact, we actually got a little sick of them because they were all over. Sometimes they'd even go up to my balcony and eat from the trees. We also saw a leopard, some buffalo, giraffes...so many animals and dozens and dozens of different kinds of birds! We rode a dug-out canoe (called a "Mekoro" I think) down a river lined with papyrus and water lilies. The water was pure and pristine and I realized that I had never been in a clean river in my entire life. It also made me think if there were any clean rivers at all in the Philippines. I doubt it. There will always be a candy wrapper, or an empty snack bag floating around somewhere.
The Okavango Delta is just teeming with wildlife! It's almost unreal! It's a completely different experience seeing animals out in the wilderness than seeing it in some zoo pen. Also, the sunset, and the terrain, and the colors were all so different from any I've seen before. The desert is so poetic. Africa is so beautiful and blessed.
I cannot stress how the experience has changed my view of nature, of life. Being in a place so untouched by man, you start to realize that this is how God intended it all to be, the Garden of Eden. To quote "The Lion King" (how appropriate), I saw the Great Circle of Life in action and have a newfound respect for nature, for animals, for this cycle of creation, and life and death. Like all creatures, we strive to stay alive, and yet bow gracefully to the circle when our time comes to expire. Living and dying is all part of a great pattern we partake in and we cannot ever deny being part of this ever revolving circle. Our actions affect one another because we are part of each other.
And what's more, every thing was created for a reason and a purpose, and even the most seemingly insignificant plant or animal plays a vital role in preserving the delicate balance of nature. Every thing down to the last blade of grass is important. Everything, when in it's natural place, is perfect. Therefore, nothing in this world is worthless. Everyone of us and every part of us is created with divine purpose. Therefore, all things must be accorded with respect.
After seeing how animals live and communicate in the wilderness, how can anyone think animals are stupid? After learning about how each species lives in it's own different "society", how can anyone think animals are lower then we are? Man may have been appointed the ruler of the animals but we are also the only creature who is absolutely clueless about what we are here for. Everything in the world seems to know it's place except us.
Mombo Camp, Botswanna
Camp number two was Mombo We stayed in luxury tents as well, much like Jao. And like Jao, the whole camp was elevated on stilts to keep wild animals at bay. No baboons living on my roof this time. Instead, at night I heard buffalos!!! I'd wake up to the sound of them moaning and heaving and it sounded like a porn flick or something! Haha!
Mombo has no rivers surrounding it but it is famous for it's game drives. It is here where you can catch the so-called "Big 5": Rhinos, Elephants, Buffalos, Lions, and Leopards! The terrain here was less lush than Jao because theere were no rivers. There was less sand, more dessert dust, and more brambles, thorn bushes, shrubs, and beautiful Baobab trees like the on the left. They're absolutely massive! You can hollow it out and live inside it. I fell in love with them.
Isn't she a beaut?
Hyenas look like dirty, thread-bare old carpets. Nothing about them is graceful or exquisite. They walk like drunken bums you find in alley ways. I love them though. One of them broke into the camp's kitchen one morning and stole a gargabe can of left-overs weighing over 7 kilograms. Our guide, Brookes, chased it across the African plane, creating chaos at a nearby heard if impala. He never caught the hyena but we all had a really good laugh over it.
All the lions we saw looked like this!
(So much for the King of the Jungle!)
They may be cute but they can kill you!!! :-p
Zambia
The River Club, Livingstone, Zambia
Our third African country and camp was in Zambia! That contraption on the right, the one that looks like "a lawn mower with wings", is called a micro-lite. That's me riding behind the pilot! My Tita Ollie rode it too! The wings are made of cloth! The micro-lite took us over Victoria Falls, and some parts of Zambia. It felt incredibly liberating to be up in the sky unenclosed by walls. And no, I wasn't afraid at all. I've always toyed around with the idea of getting a pilot's license one day (because I hate driving hahaha!).
The falls look really puny in this picture but it actually spans a gorge that goes on for several miles. It's so long that half of it is in Zambia while the other half is in Zimbabwe. It's known as "The Smoke That Thunders" because where the water is stronger, all you can see is mist. It's one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World along with The Grand Canyon and the Northern Lights. Gorgeous eh?
And speaking of Zimbabwe, Zim and Zambia are separated by a river... It's weird to look across the river at another country.
I had my own room in River Club so I spent my nights soaking in my tub that overlooked the river, and relaxing to the sound of... hippos!
Seychelles
The Seychelles are a group of little islands of the coast of Kenya. Some of the top ten beaches in the world are found there, and it is the home of the famous Coco De Mer palm tree (you can research it), the Aldabra (shown having some action on the left), and the black parrot. The locals are a mix of French, British, Indian, African, and Chinese blood, a total melting pot.
I have never felt so far from civilization, not even in the bush for some reason. Maybe it's because in the bush, I was also busy and running about after animals. Seychelles is the sleepiest place I've ever been to. There are no traffic lights, no billboards, no buildings, no grocery stores, no street signs. The islands are so small, you can cross them in less than an hour. The TV had only two channels on it.
It's a really beautiful place. Spent a couple of days on the main island, Mahe, and the rest of the trip on the island of Prasline. The sand is finer than Boracay, and the ocean is an eye-popping aquamarine.
Seychelles' famous rock formations!
I just thought this was pretty!
things on the other side of the world
Have you ever felt so loaded with new ideas that you feel you don't even know where to begin processing? Africa is so completely different from the world I've known all my life.
For one, there was always the constant reminder of the ongoing AIDs pandemic. As Nino told me last night, the first life on earth came from Africa, and now death orginates from Africa too: HIV.
When we drive down EDSA, we are bombarded by images of Telecom Ads. In Africa, we get ads from the anti-AIDs campaign. Who can forget the following captions:
"I can make a diffference by being faithful to my partner."
"Know your status! Get tested."
"Not everyone's doing it! Virgin power."
"Do you have it? Visit the nearest AIDs Crisis Center"
The problem is so big that the life expectancy there is something like 35 years old. Imagine expecting to live only until age 35? It's like there's already a death sentence on you.
The problem is said to lie in their traditions. By culture, people in Africa are polygamous. It's perfectly acceptable for an unmarried woman to have a child with a man, and not expect him to marry her. Men on the other hand are allowed several wives. It's woven into the fabric of their culture, and culture is very hard to change. And what's more, many people there knowingly spread the HIV virus around. They don't bother to prevent it from circulating.
How do you help a culture that seems to prefer succumbing to AIDs rather than change it's ways? I know it's a simplistic question, but then what do I know about anything?
Things sure are different on the other side of the world.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Just a quick entry from Johannesburg. I am going crazy without internet. Have been to Botswanna and Zambia for the past week and a half and will leave for the Seychelles lates.
I've been in the bush chasing rino and lions and leopards and elephants.
whew!
Okay, goodbye!
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