Too early to say goodbye.

nothing seems too important or too memorable now. not even the annoying buzzing from the ac turned to its lowest temperature, a perfect irony for my ardent feeling. or whatever’s left of our jjamppong and the half-full matador sitting in the corner, near where my bag was. your handkerchief. the silhouettes made by the pale light from that lamp shade.

and chris carrabba singing hands down in the background. and you stood at the door, with your hands on my waist.  and you kissed me like you meant it. the night is ours and nothing is too important and too memorable anymore.

i plunged deep into your arms, and the next thing i know, i was asleep and not dreaming.

Wicked Park.

Matthew: What are you doing?
Alex: Watching you sleep.

– Wicker Park  (2004)

Today officially marks the start of February. I am saying good bye to my friends Sadness, Emptiness, Despair and Stars for the meantime. See you in March.

Shifting POVs.

I.
The last day of foundation training yesterday was, sorry for the jargon, über petiks. We spent the first half of the shift by answering the long quiz on US Geography and Culture 101 (which, to count my other trainings before, I already took three times). This is what I hate about trainings – the examinations they give are designed to test how much one has memorized. I can’t help but think that memory is equal to knowledge. If that would be the case, then I consider myself imbecile.

Mock calls were conducted and I scored very well. The next hours were spent by smoking countless sticks, talking how to cope up from a recent breakup, laughing, playing billiards and fussball in the funroom. I really believe that fussball is a game for the rich and the i-don’t-know.

I don’t know.

Inuman, of course, was next. The class was more than 15 and it took us four cabs to reach Adrian’s house in QC. Aids told the cabbies “paki-sundan lang po ‘yung unang taxi.” Someone said “wow, parang presidential convoy ang drama.”
Right after the inuman-slash-iyakan session, (there was this co-trainee of mine who confessed she and her daughter slept at Luneta last week because of his difficult husband ; she told her daughter “mamamasyal lang tayo, anak.” The next moment, half of the class was in tears.), I taxi-ed my way home, had my slippers on and went back to Cubao to meet Arj.

II.

He checked his phone regularly, as if checking the time every now and then would stop it from changing. When he reached Starbucks, Arjay was already there, smiling, phone in hand, typing words away in his laptop. He offered his right for a handshake and Arjay took it. Arjay was one of the three bloggers he met when he was still blogging at Standpoint.

He found out the real ‘reason’ why he left his former blog whose link contained more than 20 letters. Arjay treated him an extra hot Cappuccino in a hot afternoon. Arjay then revealed his new blog. He offered his knowledge in header making, made a simple header for Arjay’s new blog. Arjay is happy boy now.

After 20 minutes, since Arjay, too, was in a hurry, he decided to go and ran to McDo where Jace was waiting.

I.

And again, I was late.

I found out that I can never trust my counting. Jace is a March 1993 baby. Let’s count – 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 2000, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09. Scratch out the fifteen years old on my previous entry because he is a year older.

If that makes a real big difference.

Cradle snatching.

The kid is going to kill me, I thought. I am officially thirty minutes late… and counting.

Although I want to always feel that I am important (because I am and I must be) as all normal humans do, I hate it when people wait for me, whether just three minutes or thirty minutes, it still eats their precious time. That’s bad. You can’t help it. Waiting will soon develop to uncertainty.

I got off the FX and marathon-ed the overpass going to the LRT. It has been ages since I used this wonder and, quite amazed, something is obviously new. No metal detectors?! I was interrobang-ed.

At the entrance of Santalon station, there stands two machines — one is a scanner for your stuff, the other is for your full body — that same security device I first saw when we flew to Cebu some years back. Way better and more convenient than metal detectors, I said to myself as I heard Zafra’s voice somewhere saying “There has been no instance in history that a metal detector ever detected a bomb. It was of no use except for finding lost keys.” You’ve got a point but I gotta run now.