caterpillar talk

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
– Albert Einstein

let me begin this post with recent manifestations of my halfwit-ty tendencies:

“i deserve to dream because i sleep a lot.”

“i like you because i like me.”

…at, dear people, ito ang pinakamatindi…

“yung bata ngang kinain ng buwaya di natin pinatay, yung buwaya pa kaya?”

i was not drunk when i said that, bangag lang talaga.

weeeeeee!!! i’m turning 24 soon.

at 23, i feel quite accomplished yet i still desire to do more. there’s still a lot to conquer out there and, well, things have just begun for me, so to speak.

yesterday, i finally saw the hard-bound form of my master’s thesis and i felt proud of myself. i also went out last night for another let’s paint session and, yes, i also felt proud of myself because of that.

i chose a bigger block of plaster to paint on this time. pictures? sure i’ll be sharing them with you all soon, let me just find the time to transfer the photo files from my phone to the computer. for now, i’ll just share that the block had a fruity design. the table of fruits reminded me of my first few successful painting sessions with my art mentor back in 1989 — a long, long time ago. i managed to transform the all-white block into something very colorful and yummy to the eyes!

11.27.06 update: transformation of my new block

haaay, i used to draw and paint a lot when i was still a wee youngling (as if i really went through that phase of being oh-soooooo wee, hehe). my mother saw my fascination for the colors and clear interest in doing art during my early years, so she enrolled me in a summer art workshop. the school year after that and during the years that followed, i continued pursuing my art by spending a lot of my after-school time with an art mentor. i was made to join art contests and it couldn’t be helped that i emerged champion in some (haha, ang angas ba?). i could say that the highlight of my grade school years was my romance with art. i liked going up the school stage during recognition ceremonies because of the artist of the year award. belonging to the top 5 of the class was just another reward.

art unfortunately took the backseat during my high school years. don’t ask me why, it just happened. my ventures into visual arts around that time only surfaced in the form of projects and as hastily-drawn backgrounds for our plays. i ceased showing up at my mentor’s place; i also ceased being inspired enough to join art competitions. looking back, it was a pity that i pursued other (probably lesser?) interests. i don’t know, maybe it’s just how things were meant to be.

when i got out from college, i told myself i’d get back to my art. my attempts in that direction have not really been full-hearted, however. sure, i’ve gone back to having art outputs but they only come at intervals of several months… and most often, i’m not quite satisfied with them. but then maybe i’m just expecting from myself too much.

it’s been awhile since i last painted and actually enjoyed my painting output. so now here’s hoping you would understand just how happy i felt when i saw how my latest painting session turned out. heaven. i really felt proud.

you know what’s the idea playing in my mind? i’d love to mentor kids to paint during our common spare time… for free! i imagine it would be fun and really rewarding!

back to my turning 24. soon.

i’m sure one of the things that would come to my close friends’ minds when they come across this article would be somewhere along these lines:

“you’re turning 24! didn’t you say you’re getting married at 24??!
so what now???”

haaaay. that’s one dream of mine that i knew will go pffft but dreamt of, nevertheless. dreaming is free, right? dreaming is free alright but reality has a price. i can’t even completely take care of myself. can any other excuse top that? haha, do i hear you mumbling “excuses! excuses!”?

speaking of dreams, there’s another dream that will not be made real.

didn’t jory, sealdi, and i plan on reaching batanes before we turn 24? here’s the update: jory and sealdi already turned 24, jory is in new york now, and i’m soon turning 24 but WE haven’t gone to batanes!!! i was hoping i could have that “batanes before my 24th birthday” dream — batanes being my dream destination and all — but… i just know that current circumstances won’t permit me. a trip to batanes would cost me more than what i can currently afford. plus, my time’s being eaten up by things that i still have to deal with. there will surely be another time. as my travel buddy would say, ‘timing is everything’. aight, timing is important — that’s my take on timing, by the way.

i feel i’m starting to be a little more responsible now. with that, i also get to realize that i have so many fears, after all. but i don’t wanna discuss my fears with y’all now. not a lot of people are privy to them and most, i plan to keep only to myself… for now.

oh, i’ve been checking out cars lately. i’ve been thinking of owning them EVENTHOUGH I DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO BUY ANY OF THEM AND I DON’T DRIVE. it’s just that they’re my new idea of toys. gowsh, what’s happening to me? oh well. oh well. oh well!

"There is no such thing as pure pleasure;
some anxiety always goes with it."
–Ovid, Metamorphoses

…and so another month has passed and i'm still here in metro manila. please don't ask me why i haven't moved on yet when according to the plan i had three summers ago, i should have been out of here last year. let's just say that this early twenty-something phase i'm currently in is meant to unfold here and not anywhere else. nice enough excuse eh? don't worry, i'll be out of here soon. you just wait.

apart from work, the highlights of the last three weeks were good food, old school art, movies, and great company.

movies recently seen on the big screen: x-men 3: the last stand with labmates, the da vinci code with nobody, and over the hedge with p6peeps

other movies recently seen: sideways and la visa loca with ids99 beautiful gal pals

recent food trips: montanara, spinach and gelato of amici di don bosco with bisaya bloggers, pizza and pasta of sbarro and chicken meals of jollibee with labmates, clubhouse of delifrance with sealdi, pork sisig and sinigang of dencio's in megastrip with p6peeps, seafood jambalaya and pepperoni pizza of burgoo with my kuya

recent artworks: glitter glue painting and spur-of-the-moment crayon work on our table top in burgoo

recent overnight sessions: movie marathon and food trip with ids99 beautiful gal pals in rose's makati apartment and inuman session and get-together with p6peeps in edson and jerk's apartelle in makati.

on the movies recently seen…
first, allow me to say what they say, "ignorance is bliss…"

i know there are people who are quite disappointed with the recent installment of x-men. me? i'm not disappointed. how could i be? i did not grow up looking forward to friday nights and the x-men tv series, i never got into reading the x-men comics, and my familiarity with the x-men characters is only due to my kuya's x-men cards and my labmates' x-men stories. i went inside the cinema without much expectation on the plot, i went out satisfied with the special effects and the bonus scene after the end credits.

as for the movie version of dan brown's the da vinci code (DVC), i think only those who have not read the book will be impressed by the movie. tom hanks happens to be one of my favorite actors yet i have to agree with my bisdak friends who declared that he didn't quite fit the picture of the robert langdon that we got to know in the book. i believe audrey tautou gave the best that she could for her sophie character but the screenplay didn't give her much to work on… man, they downplayed sophie's brilliance several-fold! except for that part where sophie introduces herself as a member of the french intelligence department, nowhere else in the movie will you get the idea that she's really a cryptologist. i was also disappointed with how they barely moved the camera over leonardo da vinci's works in the louvre scenes. plus, duh, they downgraded the "cryptex within a cryptex" to a mere cryptex and, as a result, one code/clue got left out. if there's something in the movie that i'd like to praise, it's the beauty of the surroundings of the rosslyn chapel… and oh, sir ian mckellen's performance as leigh teabing and paul bettany's portrayal of the murderous monk, silas.

if in poseidon we had a movie where sweet home alabama meets glory road meets phantom of the opera meets motorcycle diaries meets perfect storm meets titanic meets…, for the DVC movie we have amelie meets a very long engagement meets forrest gump meets x-men meets the lord of the rings meets spiderman 2 meets the last temptation of christ meets… okay, okay, i'm stopping.

on other things…
i'm glad that i still get to spend time with my friends from high school and from college despite our respective locations and "busy" schedules. i guess, it helps a lot that we get to think that "being busy" is such a lame excuse for not getting together and enjoying each other's company. people who feign they are too busy simply don't take time. who're they kidding? the world happens to be fair, it almost always proves "busy" people right. i'm one busy bee with a track-record to boot, i should know.

haaay. may is over and june is here. the rainy days have come and i haven't gone on a decent vacation yet!!! whack me! i had a fun summer, why am i complaining??

i haven't been home in my mindanao since the fourth day of january this year. i hope to be home for at least a week this june or maybe this july. in a way, i've already got some things planned: go trekking and horsebackriding and dare the zipline in mapawa nature park, put my life in the way of danger via white-water rafting and then dive off some high bridge in cagayan de oro city. a clever suicide plan? naaah! i'm actually talking about thrill and fun. tara, let's!

for now, raindrops keep falling on my head… i should buy myself an umbrella soon.

p.s. my "amazing" saturday article got published in Inq7's YOU! click here to see my byline.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
– Oscar Wilde

don’t tempt me. don’t tempt me. don’t tempt me.

those are the words i would often say everytime somebody tempts me to break away from the things i normally do to try a thing which i think i should not be after (or do or anymore do). there are things — which may or may not be lumped with the likes of yellow cab, movies, and mind games — that i find very tempting. i say ‘don’t tempt me’ and throw in a series of ‘no, no, no’ repeatedly with so much heart to make myself be heard more by myself than by the receiver. it’s a futile exercise because the inevitable happens: my self-control weakens, i fail to resist, i yield in. pfft! so much for resisting.

my latest temptation is gamehouse’s super jigsaw medley. there was text twist. there was super bounce out. there was bookworm. now, there’s super jigsaw medley for me! actually, there is still text twist (and super bounce out and bookworm, too) in my computer, but super jigsaw medley is now my new favorite.

how can it not be? i’ve always been a fan of puzzles. i even bought a box with a thousand puzzle pieces four years ago to feed my ‘puzzle-fondness’. my youngest sister and i have long since put the pieces of the puzzle together (999 of them only because we lost one piece, how sad), proof of which is the big picture (with a tiny missing piece) mounted in the family area of our house.

super jigsaw medley does not allow me to hold puzzle pieces with my own hands. nevetheless, it allows me to manipulate the pieces using the mouse so i can put things together. it’s a gamepack with a very user-friendly interface and there are many beautiful puzzles to put together in its gallery. it boasts of versatility and gives players the option to set their own desired level of difficulty. it’s a nice way to while away the time!

the thing is: i’m only using the trial version, care to share the crack? hehehe.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight.
–Kahlil Gibran

remember this?

somebody ripped it off my wall. i don’t know where the big piece is now and i don’t wanna go looking for it — i’m trying to avoid more pain. most likely it’s in one of those big trash bins, crumpled and torn. i imagine it must have been carelessly thrown away… in the same manner that it was torn off as indicated by the bits of yellow crepe paper left on the wall.

the one who ripped it off didn’t know how much i valued what was taken. if only the person had known, if only i had known beforehand my work’s fate… perhaps it could have been saved.

it’s beyond saving now.

when i realized it was gone and saw the torn yellow bits stuck on the wall, anger welled up in me and i thought i was going to explode. i did not. the more i looked at the yellow bits, the more i was made aware of my loss and i just wanted to cry. gawa ko ‘yon eh, pinaghirapan ko ‘yon… tapos... argh! i didn’t cry — i stopped myself from doing so because i didn’t want my roommate to see me crying. heck, i can talk about crying but i don’t want anyone to see me crying. as i’ve said, i didn’t cry… ‘though i wanted to.

i didn’t cry but i felt defeated. i only had 1.5 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours and i got back to my room tired… and what was there waiting to greet me?

not warmth but the empty wall.

the absence of a symbol of comfort and something personally valuable and irreplaceable.

another embrace from the feeling of loss.

the latest addition to my piled up frustrations and blues.

-¤-

finding meme oh!

i got tagged by the trickmeister and in the spirit of friendship and blog-citizenship, i’m gonna do this 23/5 thing…

So, here are the instructions:
1. Go to your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence or closest to it.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

my 23rd post is time travel — posted last year on the 27th day of august. the 5th sentence of the said post is ‘5 years ago, i was a college freshie and was finally free from wearing uniforms!’ ngeork. if you’re game for this, you’re IT!

take a good look at what we have here. this is what we call an ambigram and i made it myself.

an ambigram is a word or group of words which can be read equally well from at least two different points of view. this particular ambigram can be read the same way when it’s rotated by 180 degrees. if you don’t believe me, go behind your monitor and look at the image from there (so you’ll really see what i mean).

okay, okay…i’ll make things easier for you. this is the same image as above, but this time it’s rotated by 180 degrees:

nice, huh? anyway, i’m not yet satisfied with this one. i still need to improve the symmetry, and i’m planning to try a different font style.

in the meantime, if my ambigram really got your attention, i suggest you check out this site: http://ambigram.matic.com/ambigram.htm, an online ambigram generator. once you get there, try submitting your name and see how it looks like when written the “ambigram way”. have fun!