Writing Samples

***This list is a work in progress. I'll be working on populating it with more links to writing samples.***

• Coffee table book on marine renewable energy on Southeast Asia: https://www.oceanpixel.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Vast-and-Boundless.pdf
• Short animation film on marine renewable energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt3RJhigIh8

When Love Advice Turns Out to Be Right

Something funny happened.

When I started to work in music, all the music I listened to was work.

I am stunned by this realization.

Let me backtrack.

A few years ago, fresh out of music school abroad, I went back home and opened myself up to music opportunities that presented themselves to me. This led to two main avenues: one in the indie music scene and another in the DJ scene, both as a singer/songwriter and both of which I pursued.

The indie music scene was a natural fit and musically fulfilling; it also didn't pay the bills, which made it more of a side thing. The DJ scene was new to me but was an opportunity to learn; it was also more financially lucrative, which meant more gigs and more time preparing for those gigs.

The thing about the DJ scene, though, is that you play a lot of other people's songs. This meant that for the most part, the songwriter in me had to take a backseat. Another thing is that, at least in the situation I found myself in, you have to play a particular kind of music, with a particular level of popularity. So I found myself learning all these popular songs, previously unknown to me and in a style that wasn't so much my thing. Though I was happy to try something unfamiliar and flex some new muscles, it got to a point where it was the only listening I ever did, and the only singing I ever did. There are only so many hours in a day.

I realize that this is what people in cover bands do all the time and that many of them are happy doing it. I suppose it's a matter of fit. I needed to write original material. If I was going to do covers, I wanted to do songs that resonated with me.

And because I couldn't, I suppose my spark died.

When, after a couple years, that gig ended, I was so sick of music--the music I'd been performing, that is, which was the only music in my life over that span of time--that I just stayed away from it. I stopped singing. I stopped listening to music. I stopped thinking about it. I wasn't craving it. It didn't make me feel anything; in fact, I think I'd even developed an aversion to it. Whenever someone would send me a link to some music, I'd dillydally before listening (if I listened at all). And this sort of malaise extended to art in general. I stopped writing. I stopped reading. I stopped watching non-mainstream films.

In that period, something I'd read (from Kenny Werner or Victor Wooten or Inner Game of Music--I forget, but I have to get back on those books) came to mind: the notion that to be great at and happy in music, one had to get to a place where one was happy even without it (heavily paraphrasing here). When I read that all those years ago, the thought made me uncomfortable, and I was unconvinced, because music was what made me happy. But wouldn't you know it, I found myself in a place where it didn't, and the idea returned to me. So I figured, what the hell, why force it? I guess I'll just leave music alone.

It's a bit like relationship advice, isn't it? Work on yourself, your life, your happiness, and the right partner will come.

And I think that today, after maybe a year (a whole year!), it seems it has.

I was watching a TV episode this evening, and some of the music on it reminded me of an old favorite band. After the episode, I found myself digging through my old dusty CDs, feeling some old fondness arising within me, and all of a sudden wanting to listen to everything, and being frustrated that I don't have decent headphones, and making it an immediate priority to get a new pair or get my old ones fixed (or both).

It's too early to tell, but I think Werner (or Wooten or Inner Game) may have been onto something. It seems counterintuitive or paradoxical, but because I've lived without it, because I don't need it, this may be the beginning of an even better relationship with music, a better approach toward it, a greater respect for it, a whole new level of coexisting with it.

Sisig Joke

Today's corny joke (that has me doubled over in my head) is brought to you by the sisig (sizzling chopped fatty pork) I had last night and my 90s childhood.

---
Knock, knock.

     Who's there?

Sisig.

     Sisig who?

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want
So tell me what you want, what you really really want
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna
I wanna really really really wanna sisig ah!
---

I am so sorry. Or, you're welcome :D

The Breakup

Not mine.

A friend asked me to write a paragraph-long break-up letter because she needs to dump someone and doesn't know how to do it properly. She read me her draft, and it was way too nice, sweet, and apologetic. This is the first time I've ever had to write a break-up letter for someone else--and to write one to a girl, for that matter--so I just thought I'd post it here, to remember.

My friend's name will be changed for anonymity. The crazy chick she's dumping never gave her real name in the first place, so I'm using the fake name she gave.

Warning: The language isn't the foulest thing on the planet, but it's not for children.

Dear Sweet,

You are quite the opposite of that, and maybe that’s precisely why you ironically chose that fake name. At first I thought you actually were nice and sweet, but you’re a fucking crazy, egotistical, opportunistic bitch who can’t seem to make up her mind and preys on people’s emotions to make herself feel better. You expect to be pursued and treated like a queen while treating others like shit. You probably derive some perverse pleasure from hearing someone say that about you, since you seem to be so fixated on the idea of yourself as some crazy, unstable bitch. Who knows, I could be completely wrong about you, and you really are nice and matino pala, but that’s not what you’ve shown me, and I’m not sticking around to find out. So for both our sakes, I’m putting an end to this sham of a friendship/relationship, this twisted game of yours. I’ll stay out of your life; please stay the hell away from mine.

Laura

In addition, I gave my friend these instructions:

And then, VERY IMPORTANT: If she calls, DO NOT ANSWER! Under any circumstances! Or the whole dumping will go down the drain and be for nothing. Not answering is just as important, if not MORE important, than the letter! The period after the dumping is CRUCIAL! Do not answer, and block her number on your phone! And then delete it from your address book. IMMEDIATELY!

Even if she texts, saying, hey, can we talk, one last time? DO NOT TALK TO HER! You don’t even have to respond. But if you must, just say, no, we’ve talked enough, I’m done, goodbye. Brief, curt, detached. No sad googly-eyed sorries or anything like that.

And if she replies again or tries to call again or whatever, IGNORE. IGNORE HER LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. Because IT DOES!

I hope this does it. Because "Sweet" needs to be gone, and "Laura" needs to stop letting her back in. Fingers crossed!

The Power of an Apology

This is really quite ridiculous. A couple of months ago, the hot issue in the Philippines was the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. I don't remember any other national issue being nearly as polarizing as this one. Most people lean heavily in one direction or the other, so much so that calm, respectful, objective discussion and finding some sort of middle ground are nearly impossible. Things have gotten ugly over this.

Members of the government are no exception, and here begins a tale that is much longer than it needs to be. Senator Tito Sotto is staunchly against the RH Bill. He has his reasons, and I won't go into what they are or whether they are valid or otherwise. (For that matter, I won't go into my own stand on the bill.) What's important is that he made an impassioned speech about it during Senate deliberations, and it was discovered that his speech contained material copied, word for word, from a blog post, which he did not credit as his source.

In response to accusations of plagiarism, Sotto at first denied that he took the material from elsewhere. Later, he admitted that he did take the material from said blog but maintained that he did not plagiarize, because blogs are not covered by copyright. This enraged everyone, most especially bloggers and writers, whose intellectual property rights have basically just been snubbed by one of the country's lawmakers.

The good senator, in response to this public outcry, gave a couple more speeches over the course of the Senate talks on the bill, again taking material from other sources (a few more blogs plus a speech by the late Robert F. Kennedy)--again quoted verbatim, without attribution. He continued to insist that taking from blogs isn't plagiarism. As for Kennedy's speech, Sotto claims not to have plagiarized that either. You silly people, you thought you had me, but Kennedy's speech was in English, and mine was in Tagalog, and even if my speech contained a translation that was as direct and exact as it gets, I still did not plagiarize because obviously, Kennedy's speech and mine are in two different languages.

I mean... was this a joke? Was this his way of being cheeky and sticking it to the people? Or--and this is kind of a scary thought, considering this guy makes decisions on behalf of an entire nation--was this really, truly, actually  the product of his logic?

Needless to say, citizens were outraged and indignant, and Sotto instantly rose to Internet infamy and became everyone's current favorite object of ridicule, contempt, hate, etc. News articles, blog posts, statuses (stati?), memes, and comments criticizing him, making fun of him, and lambasting him flooded the Internet.

I kind of felt bad for him. Yes, what he did was wrong, and yes, he should've just admitted it and apologized, and no, he definitely shouldn't have done it again, which it seems he did on purpose, just to piss people off. And yes, people have the right to speak up against what he did because we have to fight for our rights and fight for what's right and not tolerate less-than-upstanding behavior from the people who run our country. (I just used "right" 3 times and "fight" twice in the same sentence; I think my inner activist has been unleashed.) Still, Sotto is a person, with a life and a family and feelings and a sense of self-worth that takes a beating when people criticize him, and a lot of what was being said and posted on the Internet was just downright mean. Rather than rationally, intelligently dealing with the issue and criticizing Sotto's actions (which some people did--kudos to them), a lot of people simply ridiculed him, cursed him, called him names, spat venomous words directed at him, belittled him. Yes, he sort of brought it upon himself, but no one deserves to be treated without basic human respect.

Sotto thought so too, and he found a way to stop people from saying bad things about him ever again: Right before the brand-new Cybercrime Prevention Act was signed into law, the sneaky senator inserted a last-minute provision on libel, whereby absolutely anything that anyone says or posts on the Internet that is interpreted as malicious can land the person in jail for up to 12 years--posing a great threat to freedom of speech/expression. (How this last-minute add-on made it past all senators [except one, who voted against the act] and the president of the Philippines, who signed it into law, is unthinkable, but that is another musing for another time.)

So now, the entire Internet (the Philippine portion of it, at least, although the issue is starting to get international attention from the media and organizations such as the UN) is again up in arms, protesting against a potentially repressive law and the government officials responsible--foremost among whom is Sotto. In so few months, this guy has turned himself into an object of ridicule, a caricature of an idiot politician, an object of hate, a villain, an enemy of freedom.

The shitstorm goes beyond just Sotto. The other senators and people in government are scrambling to react. Some have been caught embarrassed and have had to admit to not thoroughly reading and studying the act before voting for it. Some claim no responsibility, pointing the finger at those who actually penned the law, or those who should have questioned it but didn't. Some are standing their ground, saying that citizens have nothing to be afraid of if they are doing nothing wrong. Some are realizing that this provides a golden opportunity for them, and they have swayed over to the side of the people, hoping to win their sympathy, their allegiance, their votes. I wonder what all this looks like from the outside. A silly, minor blunder bound to right itself in time? A potentially troublesome political situation to keep an eye on? A sign of serious government incompetence and the beginnings of political unrest, warning investors to stay the hell away? All I know is what it looks like from the inside, and it's a bit of a mess.

The thing is, all this probably could have been avoided, if only Sotto had, after the first instance/accusation of plagiarism, simply admitted he was wrong, apologized, and promised not to do it again. It's the most basic lesson in human behavior, one of the first things we are taught by our parents: if you screw up, tell the truth, say sorry, and don't do it again. Had he just done that, all the Internet buzz about him would have died out quickly, and he wouldn't have felt so bullied that he needed to sneak a libel clause into the Cybercrime Prevention Act, and our government wouldn't be scrambling to save face over this, and people wouldn't be up in arms to fight against repression. And maybe by now we'd have made some progress regarding the RH Bill--which, although quickly forgotten and overshadowed by this whole Sotto saga, is what might have started it all in the first place.

Arrogance

I wish that people could be confident about themselves, their abilities, their ideas, without the tendency to become arrogant.

I think every single person has moments of arrogance. It could be the overall arrogant demeanor of those who think they are just better overall than everyone else and walk around like they're the shit--what we usually visualize when thinking of an arrogant person--but it could also be partial/compartmentalized: religious arrogance, moral arrogance (self-righteousness?), intellectual arrogance (which could be "I'm smarter than everyone else," "I'm deeper than everyone else," "I have better taste than everyone else," "I don't conform like everyone else does," and so on).

I suppose maybe arrogance is just part of the human condition, part of the struggle to validate ourselves, to find meaning in our lives, to discover what makes us important and unique and valuable. It's a see-saw between worthlessness and arrogance, a healthy sense of self and confidence being the ideal balance. But as we know, even when we've attained that point of perfect equilibrium, it takes just as much work to stay there. Flinch or blink for a second, and you find yourself falling to worthlessness or arrogance, overcompensating, falling to the other side. And the see-sawing continues until you get back to that state of balance or until you get tired and just give up.

Like all things in life, I guess the important thing, then, is just to keep on going. This is not school, where we are graded purely on outcome. This is life, where you can actually get an "A" for effort.

Children

It's all about balance. When I have children of my own, I want them to do well in school. But I don't want them to be all school and no play. I don't want my (future... like WAY future) 5-year-old to be able to multiply double-digit numbers but be uncomfortable singing and dancing and playing and socializing and talking nonsense. Sometimes, kids just need to play and explore.

One thing I miss from childhood: Planter's Cheese Curls and Cheese Balls (okay, I guess that's two things).

I don't want to call the (future) father of my (future) kids "Dad," nor do I want him to call me "Mom." I love the idea of the man I love being the father of my children, but he's not MY father. He's my lover, my husband, my partner. And so I will address him as such and treat him as such. And I want my children to grow up seeing that. I want them to grow up seeing romance between Mom and Dad as a normal, lovely thing, not as an icky thing.

Coriolanus

Flighty and feeble like birds
Like trees, swayed by the slightest of breezes
Man is akin to nature, all right

We often see ourselves as separate from nature
But really, we are a part of it
And so we possess the same characteristics, have the same tendencies
The good and the bad

The Experiment

I just finished watching the movie The Experiment, and it brought me to tears and broke my heart. The basic premise of the movie is a social/behavioral experiment where men were assigned the role of either a prisoner or a prison guard and were to live that way for two weeks. There were rules that the guards were to impose, and breaking the rules was to be met with commensurate punishment. If they lasted the full two weeks, each participant would be paid $14,000. If even a single individual bailed out, the experiment would end, and no one would be paid. If there was any sort of violence or threat to anyone's life, the experiment would likewise end, and no one would be paid. (Spoiler alert!) Things quickly got out of hand, as the guards started to take their roles too much to heart, the prisoners followed suit, and they all discovered that the experimenters' rules on violence and well-being turned out to be a lot less stringent than expected. The guards began to resort to increasingly extreme and inhumane measures to keep the prisoners under control, and the prisoners felt indignation and resentment and struggled with their spirits being broken. The situation escalated and eventually resulted in a riot, with guards and prisoners going at each other. That, finally, led to the experiment being cut short less than halfway in.

I know it's a fictional scenario, an isolated one at that, and that the chances of something like that happening in real life are slim to none (I'm hoping it's none, really), but the way the characters turned ugly and did things to each other and lost sight of their humanity... that's something we see in real life, on a day-to-day basis. Some of it might be as extreme as what happened in the movie; I suppose a similar scenario plays out in many prisons. There's a lot of war, killing, corruption, and so on that goes on in the world. But it also happens in ways that are not as extreme but are nonetheless ugly and are perversions of our humanity. We just hurt each other in so many ways, and often, we don't even realize it, because we are so consumed by whatever selfish reasons we have for behaving as we do. Someone does something hurtful to another, the other retaliates, and with each turn taken, the hurting becomes progressively worse until it becomes all about the hurting and the fighting and the getting even, and we forget our human selves. And by the time we take a timeout, things have just gotten so bad and convoluted, and people's spirits have become so damaged that it's difficult to unravel it all and to say who did what and who started it and to separate ourselves from our pain. We see before us a big tangled mess of fault and pain and responsibility and tears and blood, and it just seems impossible to work through, to untangle or get through or push aside, so we just walk away. We walk away and leave a part of ourselves in there, and that's that.

I don't have a solution, and I'm not here to offer one. I just wish we'd be better to each other, that's all.

It was a great movie. The premise was simple but interesting and offered insight into the human psyche. The actors were brilliant. I'm speechless. I have nothing more to say other than... watch it.

Wings and Pies in Somerville on a Sunny Day

It's mid-March, and it's more spring than it is winter. After spending a week missing out on the sunshine, I finally decided to get up off my ass and take a stroll in Somerville yesterday. The purpose was threefold: to bask in the sunshine, to get some exercise, and to check out some food places. A search for the best buffalo wings in the Boston area led me to Wings Over Somerville (among others), and a search for a good dessert place led me to Petsi Pies. Both places are a reasonable walk (10-20 minutes) from the Porter Square T stop, so that's where I decided to go.

Usually, when faced with an escalator alongside a flight of stairs, I take the stairs. I usually do so semi-automatically, but yesterday, I chose the stairs a little more deliberately, since one of my reasons for being out was to get some exercise. Maybe I should've paid more attention to the fact that among a trainful of people getting off at that station, only 2 others besides me opted for the stairs. If I'd given it more consideration, I would've realized that it was an incredibly long flight of stairs: 9 sets of 10-12 steps each, with a landing only a couple feet long in between. I did eventually realize it, but by then, it was too late to turn back. I wanted to stop for a brief rest a couple times, but that would've been embarrassing. So I kept at it, and once I reached the top, I mentally patted myself on the back for the accomplishment while trying to catch my breath. And then I turned the corner and was confronted with another flight of stairs, not as long as the one I had just climbed but not a short one either. I took the escalator.

And thank God I did, because I had a good walk ahead. I went straight down Somerville Avenue, walking past a bunch of gas stations, a cafe, a park, a teenage couple, a bunch of skate rats, a carwash (whose driveway was on/parallel to the sidewalk I was walking on--I was walking on the sidewalk and got honked at by a car trying to get past me to get to the carwash).

Upon arriving at Wings Over, I ordered a DC-3 (the smallest size of boneless wings, about half a pound, for $6.99) in Red Alert buffalo sauce (third among 5 levels of hotness). The wings come with celery sticks and your choice of blue cheese or buttermilk ranch dressing. The place is small, just a counter and a few chairs--for delivery and carry-out only. I hung out for a few minutes while waiting for them to prepare my order--they cook to order, which is great. The boneless wings are good, not mind blowing, but good. They're made of strips of white meat, lightly breaded. Each piece is completely covered in the buffalo sauce but not drenched. In fact, there was practically no extra sauce at the bottom of the container. This was a bit of a disappointment for me, as I, unlike some people, kind of like sweeping my chicken across the extra sauce so that every side of every bite is covered in sauce. Nevertheless, even with just enough sauce to coat the wings, they still were tasty. The Red Alert sauce is described on their menu as "hotter than most hots," and it's got some kick, but to me, it's just right. I do, however, like spicy stuff, so perhaps for some people, this already would be hotter than "just right." Nevertheless, there are two more levels of hotness above this one, so people who like their wings really hot have options beyond this one. The buttermilk ranch is creamy but otherwise unremarkable. Then again, I'm not a big dressing person.

I'd go back to this place if I happened to be in the area and wanted something to eat. I wouldn't go out of my way, though. There are other buffalo wing places I'd like to check out, and those take priority over a return trip to Wings Over.

After getting the wings, it was time to hit Petsi Pies on Beacon Street. Somerville Avenue and Beacon Street lie parallel to each other, and both are intersected by Lowell Street. However, the commuter rail tracks lie in between the two streets, which makes it impossible for Lowell Street to go straight though on street level. There's a nice little walkway under the tracks, and once you emerge, Petsi Pies is right at the corner.

The shop is also small. There's enough room only for a table with plastic utensils and things, a small table and a couple seats pushed against the wall, and the counter, with some of their pastries on display. Behind the counter is a rack with all the pies. I ordered a 4-inch roasted vegetable and goat cheese pie ($4.95), a 6-inch apple pear cranberry pie with brown sugar walnut topping ($7), and a red velvet cupcake (). I decided to take them home.

I walked back to the Porter Square T stop, and this time, I decided to take the escalator all the way down. I know walking down is much easier than walking up, but with my pastries in tow, I didn't have a free hand to hold on to the rail or grab onto it in case I tripped, and if I did fall, I'd have a long, steep way to fall. A train arrived as soon as I got to the platform, and since Porter Square is pretty near one end of the Red Line, there were a lot of vacant seats. From my seat, I observed how over the course of the trip, the people on the train changed: ages, outfits/occupations, races. It was interesting.

When I got home, I tried the stuff from Petsi Pies. The savory pie is good. The roasted veggies are fresh, the crust is flaky, and the goat cheese is flavorful. The sweet pie is okay. The filling is a little sour/tangy for me. The brown sugar walnut topping is pretty good, although there are a few whole walnut chunks, which are okay, but I would've preferred if the nuts were finely ground and better incorporated into the topping. The crust, like that of the savory pie, is nice and flaky. The red velvet cupcake is good. It is topped with frosting--not too sure if it's cream cheese because I don't get an definitive cream cheese flavor--and red sugar. It has a little less frosting than I'd like, but it's good creamy frosting that isn't too dense/heavy, and I like the texture of the red sugar. The cake is good too. It has a hint of cocoa but not overwhelming to the point that it tastes like chocolate rather than red velvet. The texture is good too, not too fluffy/airy but also not too dense. I'd definitely go back for this cupcake, and I'd love to try another one of their savory pies as well as some of the other delectable-looking pastries they have (including scones, brownies).

A nice afternoon overall. I got my exercise, my dose of sunshine, a bit of exploration of a neighborhood I'd never been to before, some decent boneless buffalo wings, and some nice pastries.

I Love TV

Really. It just brought some life and sound into my cold, lonely, quiet rented Boston suburb room.

I didn't have a TV in my room back in the Philippines. But in the Philippines, I had a whole house, as opposed to just a room. I had a family at home, as opposed to roommates who keep to themselves.

No wonder Americans watch so much TV.

I Unwittingly Ate Way Too Much Cream Cheese Today

I thought it was goat cheese, so instead of spreading it, I simply sliced it into half-centimeter-thick slices and put it on my bread. Oh dear.

I Wish

I wish there were a way to capture tactile memories, just as photographs can capture images. I wish there were a way to touch across oceans, just as voices through a telephone.

Taste, I can do without. And smell would be nice, but I can do without it, too. These two, I can give up for a while, while we wait.

But touch... sometimes, as before, I will touch myself--stroke my hair, caress my cheek, hold my hand--and imagine it is you, if only to hold on to memories, albeit false, of what makes me feel closest to you.

How to Get a Solid Nine Hours of Sleep

I slept a solid nine hours the past two nights. Before my world fell apart halfway through this year, nine hours was standard for me. Since then, I haven't slept nine hours straight. Until now.

The culprit (or, the answer to my sleep problems)? It seems the answer is something I never would have imagined: cookies.

A couple of months ago, my two younger sisters decided to get into the home baking business. Nothing big, really. They just got into baking one day and decided, hey, our stuff is yummy, maybe we should sell. And so they did. To their friends, to relatives, to the neighbors, to my boyfriend's officemates. The orders kept coming, and everyone was happy.

Until, as predicted by my Mom, my sisters began to lose interest in baking. J, whose interest in the baking part was marginal to begin with and who focused more on advertising (i.e., bringing goodies to school for her friends to taste), retail/marketing (i.e., getting orders), and accounting (i.e., reimbursing my mom for ingredients, gasoline, and electricity, and splitting up the profits between her and my other sister), showed up in the kitchen less and less. Q, who is the chief baker and is largely responsible for starting this whole baking thing, has lost all interest in the actual baking, decorating, and packing; all she likes to do now is make the dough/batter.

And so, to whom does all the work fall? No other than the mom and the older sister (i.e., me), and, by default, the older sister's boyfriend, of course.

And all this just in time for an order for a whopping 800 cookies, our biggest single order to date.

So, sometime in the afternoon on the day before the orders were due, we got to work. J was sick, so she was stuck in bed. Q wanted to bring mini cupcakes to her Christmas party the next day, so she got started on those. Mom laid out the baking sheets, preheated the oven, and brought out the cookie dough from the fridge (it was made the day before). I measured and balled the dough and placed the balls on a cookie sheet, and Mom placed them into the oven and was in charge of removing them from the oven when they were done. While they were baking, I continued to measure, ball, and place dough on the cookie sheets. Mom helped Q with the cupcakes.

Once the cookies were done, Mom removed them from the oven, and I eased them off the cookie sheet with a spatula (?) and placed them on a cooking rack, one by one. I then started to place more cookie dough on the sheet I just emptied. Meanwhile, Mom placed a new batch into the oven and continued to help Q with her cupcakes.

Before long, we were rolling like a machine. Mom removed a batch from the oven and placed in a new one before helping Q with her cupcakes. I took cooled cookies from the cooling rack and arranged them on a tray, got the fresh batch of cookies off the cookie sheet and onto the cooling rack, and spooned more cookie dough onto the cookie sheet, all the while keeping track of how many cookies we had already made.

Seven hours later, the machine was still rolling, although the cupcakes were done, Q was gone, and in between her oven duties, Mom went around fixing stuff in the house instead of frosting cupcakes. Seven hours later, the machine has not sat down once. Seven hours later, a new cog arrived in the form of R, my boyfriend.

We still needed to make four sheets' worth of cookies. Mom took over cookie duties, from spooning the dough onto the cookie sheet all the way to transferring freshly made cookies to the cooling rack. R and I began to pack the cookies into 40 containers, 20 cookies per. It was not a simply matter of putting 20 cookies into one container and moving on to the next. There tends to be some variation between batches, and we didn't want one container to have slightly darker or chewier cookies than another, so we arranged the containers into an assembly line and dropped a single cookie into each of them, one by one, to make sure each batch was represented in each container. The baking of the four remaining sheets of cookies and the packing took another hour and a half, after which all three of us, Mom and I, especially, were ready to collapse.

Eight hours of nonstop work without stopping to sit or eat (we did manage to drink water and use the bathroom when we needed to). Eight hours, the equivalent of a full day at work, and we made between 2/3 and 3/4 the minimum wage in your average Southeast Asian country.

Eight hours of baking cookies, it turns out, was all I needed to get my sleeping groove back.

Tomorrow I'll Show You How to Eat an Apple

I gave him an apple to eat while I had some cereal. He often doesn't have anything to eat until he gets to work, which isn't until about lunchtime, and I am trying to break him out of that bad habit. And if the way he ate that apple was any indication, it looks like it won't be a very hard habit to break.

Usually, when someone eats an apple, the entire core, top to bottom, is left behind, in a sort of double-concave shape. Not this guy. He ate pretty much everything but the area immediately surrounding the seeds and the seeds themselves. I laughed and fondly remarked that I had never seen anyone eat an apple so thoroughly. It amazed me, and I wanted to see it again.

Fast-forward to late night of the same day. We were in bed, about to sleep, and I was crying. He assumed it was because of my Dad, and it was--partly. But it was also partly because of him. The aftermath of my grief (or perhaps it is still ongoing grief) has somehow made me emotionally off, and I don't think I've been very good at showing him (or other people, for that matter) my love. This pains me because in less than a month, I will lose him too, in a way, as I will be leaving for Boston. I lost my Dad without being able to spend with him his last moments and say goodbye; I don't want to lose him in the same way: without being fully present and completely emotionally available to him during the time we have left.

If only it were so easy to fix my emotional state. Unfortunately, it is less like a broken car and more like a wound: you do not fix it; rather, you wait for it to heal.

A caress from a caring hand helps too. It may not directly heal the wound, but it does make one feel better.

Stroking my hair, he gently shushed me and and, "Don't cry." And then, to make me feel better, "Tomorrow, I'll show you how to eat an apple."

My Current State

I thought I knew what heartbreak was. But nothing breaks hearts like death does.

It's not just my heart that's broken. It's my entire world. When your Daddy dies, it's not just one circumstance of your life that changes. Your whole life does. Everything and everyone else around you stays the same, but somehow, the world is vastly different. Maybe because you are different, and so your relationship with a world otherwise unchanged is different. Or maybe the sameness of everything else adds to the strangeness: how can the rest of the world remain the same, how can life go on as it has, when a huge, gaping hole (in the shape of my Dad, or perhaps in the shape of my heart) has been torn into it?

This is, by far, my biggest heartbreak, and it is one that I haven't the faintest clue how to heal from.

I see people who lost their fathers months, years, decades ago, and they seem to be okay. I wonder, are they really okay, did they really manage to find a way to heal? Or are they, like me, simply on anesthetics to enable them to function in spite of the wounds?

How long can one anesthetize one's emotions before paralyzing them altogether?

How can I function without turning into a zombie?

You keep your emotions at bay, and you keep pushing them away and barring them from emerging to the forefront of your consciousness and saying, not now, not now. But you push them too far back, too many times, and they never return. And gone along with them are all the feelings, all the sensory memories, everything intangible you had of your Dad. He becomes someone in a photograph, a name, someone you know existed, your biological father. But he ceases to become your Dad, because you lose the emotional connections that made him your Dad.

And I don't want to lose my Dad again. You lose him once, your heart breaks. You lose him twice, you lose your humanity, or at least a big part of it.

I have too much to lose. And so, I must find a way to heal, properly, without numbness, without forgetting.

Untitled

I miss you touching my hair
If I close my eyes
And think hard enough
I can almost feel your fingers
Stroking my hair

Think a little harder
I can feel your breath on the back of my neck

Harder still
Your knees tucked into the backs of mine

And then the thinking gains momentum
Continues on its own
And suddenly it's more than just touch
Other senses come alive
A complete moment draws itself around my consciousness
A world around myself

And I am seeing, smelling, hearing you
Tasting
You
And everything is as it should be

You
Me
Us
Love
Home

F.r.i.c.t.i.o.n

Momentum slowly lost
Slowing down, slowing to a stop
3D, 2D, 1D
Now opaque, now translucent, now transparent
Now air
Now gone.

And now
Even more
I miss you touching my hair

Kuting

Oh my goodness, there is a newborn kitten in the house!

My sister and I got home from a cousin's birthday party and headed up the stairs and straight to Mom's room to let her know we were back. As we lounged on her bed and told her how the party went, I noticed a repeated meowing sound. It's normal to hear cats outside, but usually, you can tell that they're coming from a distance. This one sounded like it was just a room away. Also, it sounded like a kitten; its meow was so tinny and high-pitched. I didn't think a kitten could meow so loud that we'd be able to hear it from far away, so I swore it was just nearby, perhaps on the small balcony outside Mom's room. I asked them if they heard it, but they simply said yes like it was nothing out of the ordinary. So, I went back to my room and worked on some essays.

About two hours later, I stepped out of my room to use the toilet and to get a glass of water. I heard the meowing again, and it sounded even closer this time, almost like it was a mere foot or two away from me. I decided to go into Mom's room to check if she and my sister found this weird at all, or if they still thought it was normal. I entered the room to find them both just staring in the direction of the meowing, perplexed frowns combined with horrified looks on their faces. They looked up when they saw me, and my sister said, "I think there's a cat in my room. I left the window open."

I went back into the hallway to investigate. Sure enough, the meowing instantly sounded louder, and it did seem to come from the direction of my sister's room. But the sound did not seem to come from behind a wall. In fact, it seemed to come from... under the wooden shelf in the hallway between my room and my sister's room? I peered under the shelf, at a safe distance. It was hard to make out anything at first; the shadow of the base of the shelf made it hard to see much. But as my eyes made sense of the lines and shapes, I saw... shredded paper... an open shoebox, the cover lying just beside it... and... wait. A moving tail. Orange-tan and white fur. A furry little mouse-sized thing clawing at the shoebox. Oh. My. Goodness. It was a little tiny baby kitten!

I rushed back into Mom's room and told them that it wasn't in my sister's room; it was in the hallway, under the shelf! And it wasn't a cat; it was a little tiny baby kitten the size of a mouse! They followed me out of the room cautiously, careful not to step too close to the shelf. They looked suspiciously toward the bottom of the shelf but made no move to bend down and peer under it. "Look!" I encouraged them. "It's there!" My sister did, but she barely saw the kitten before rushing back into Mom's room. My Mom looked a little longer before calmly walking back into her room. I gave the kitten another look before following them into Mom's room.

"How the heck did it get there?!" I don't know who said it first--and I don't know who repeated it the most number of times. But that question bugged the hell out of us. A number of half-thought-out possibilities came up, but none of them really seemed plausible to us. Perhaps it got in through an open window--but how could a little tiny kitten that couldn't even find its way out from under the shelf have gotten up to the second floor all by itself and leapt into a window? Perhaps its mother brought it there--but where was its mother?

The thought of a mother cat suddenly made me recall an event earlier during the day: As I stepped out of my room to tell my sister we were leaving for the party, the cover of a shoebox by the shelf outside my room tipped over and fell. I was instantly confused. Did I knock it over when I opened the door? I couldn't have; my bedroom door swings inward. For that matter, since when was there a shoebox cover by the shelf? And why just the cover? And then, all of a sudden, the idea that there might be a mother cat involved solidified in my mind. A theory began to take shape, and I could almost see it happening.

While we were out (Mom must've left the house too), our househelp must've left some doors and windows open. A mother cat, lips clamped on the nape of its kitten's neck, calmly entered the house, went up the stairs, and found the best spot to make a home for its young. Spotting some shoeboxes on a nearby shoerack, the mother cat gently put down its kitten by the shelf and nudged it underneath before heading to the shoerack to get some materials for its baby's new home. As it was finishing the job of transporting said materials, I must've opened the door to my room, which made it quickly drop the shoebox cover and hide under the shelf with its baby. I guess it hid out until we all left the house, or at least until we all were back in our rooms, before it went back out to finish the job. And then, at some point, it must've gone off in search of food. Before it could return, however, all the doors and windows had been shut, and it was locked out. And now, we have a poor hungry little newborn kitten, all alone with no one to turn to. It may still be blind too; it won't leave its spot under the shelf even though the way out is clear, and it keeps clawing at the shoebox.

I want to feed the poor thing, or take it out from under the shelf and bring it outside where its mother can find it. Or maybe I could even just put it into the shoebox, together with some rags and a small container of milk. But Mom told me not to touch it because its mother might come back and attack me. So I suppose we'll just have to wait till the morning, when we can either open the doors and windows and wait for MommaCat to come back for her baby, or get someone else to scoop out the little kitty and bring it outside, where it can reunite with its mother. I just hope it'll last until then. Poor little kitty. :( I hope it wisens up and gets some sleep to conserve its energy. The last thing I wanna wake up to tomorrow morning is a dead newborn kitten outside my room. I guess we'll see what happenes tomorrow.

(Speaking of newborns, Grace and Conrad [well, just Grace, technically] gave birth already! I want to visit, especially because--I just realized--they're my first friends to have a baby!)

Kahl, Macky, and I are a bunch of whores, and I'm the biggest one of all

Music whores, that is. Gig whores.

Let me explain.

Last night, I was at a coffee shop, enjoying family time with my dad, my grandma, and my siblings. We were having a particularly sweet time because we had just left my one-of-a-kind stepmom and her one-of-a-kind family at the restaurant where we had dinner to celebrate Dad's birthday. (In this context, "one of a kind" is a bad thing; it is also an indication of quantity rather than quality: there are other people in this world who are like them [at least in soap operas], but no one is anywhere near as !?******?! as they are.)

So there I was in my rare moment of complete calm and contentment when along came a text message that took my moment away from me. It was from a guy I used to date, and he was just randomly popping up again like he does every so often. Because I'm civil and we actually parted as friends, I replied with the usual, "hey, what's up, it's been a while." He then asked if my band could play at his mother-in-law's birthday party next week. His wife, although she knows me only by name, hates me (she waged a cellphone war on me a few years ago, which I found amusing more than anything else), and I brought that up. His solution? Go by another name and pretend I'm someone else, and she'll never have to know; just please be there. He sent message after message, all but begging. And because I am a (music) whore, I said I'd ask my band.

And because my bandmates are whores as well, they said yes, despite midterms and an upper respiratory tract infection.

This morning, I woke up with a headache and a text message waiting. It was the guy, saying they didn't have room for a band after all. And now I can finally say what is at the forefront of my mind: I hate him! How dare he use the band thing, the music thing, as an excuse to get in touch with me and get his flirt on? How dare he lead me (and my bandmates) on (musically, that is)? I hate him!

And then, a mini (re)discovery. I thought about why I was so upset, and I realized all over again how much music means to me. I was upset not so much because he used music as an excuse to get in touch with me, but because it (the gig, not seeing him) wouldn't push through. I was upset because I thought I could finally play again, only to have it taken away from me as I slept--literally!

I must say, I haven't felt this alive in a while. Talking to my bandmates last night; them saying yes; discussions on what to play; this morning's indignation; my mind working at warp speed, albeit with the frenzied disorganized quality of consciousness just woken, to try to find another gig so we could push through with band practice and finally play again: all this reminded me of what I'm supposed to be doing and why. I am supposed to be relentlessly pursuing music because nothing brings me more joy or makes me feel more alive. Nothing makes me feel more at peace and one with myself and with the world. The reason I've been feeling a little distant from people in general is because of a lack of music in my life! Because music is my way of connecting with the world! Oh, I've been an idiot! But today, I am a genius!

They say music makes the world go round. The phrase may be a bit of a cliche, but for me, it is an absolute and personal truth: music really is what makes my world go round.

And hey, what do you know: my headache's gone! Good morning to me!

In a Rut

I am depressed because I don't know what to do. About anything. My life, my continuing education, my career, my romantic life, my citizenship. Seriously, everything. I'm in a rut. So many questions, and I'm too overcome by depression to even start looking for answers. It's like I've got lead running through my veins instead of blood. I don't even write anymore.

I am functioning though. There's that, at least. And I know I need to get up off my ass if I'm gonna get anywhere. I do want to. It's just so hard; inertia, y'know. And I'm not quite sure where to start.

On the bright side, I guess this means that there's much for me to do and that life isn't a done deal by the age of 25, as my 15-years-younger self thought. That's a relief. And hey, I'm writing now, aren't I? That's as good a place to start as any.