Destination Unknown

(No, this isn’t some pessimistic post about the current ills of the society)

My brother came back from Taiwan yesterday. In addition to being thrilled to see him again since we have a lot of catching up to do, I was absolutely glad that he found me one CD. One Jazz CD. One Jazz CD of my favorite comics strip of all time.

For those in the know, I don’t prefer the stereotypical laugh-out-loud, punchlines-ridden, potty-humor-driven comics strip we see too often in random newspapers or bookstores. I prefer the kind of comic strip that alludes to the wisdom of everyday life. Peanuts is exactly this kind of comic strip. What’s even better is that Peanuts to not become excessively preachy, so unlike a more recent comic notoriously known as Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Which is exactly why I’m thrilled when I was handed this CD (which was still in shrinkwrap then). I have heard the soothing jazz music (mostly in piano) in some of the e-cards found in the snoopy web page, and I can say that judging from the quality of what I’m hearing in those short flash presentation, there quite is a lot to expect in a CD heralded as one of the essential jazz CD’s of our time.

And happy I was when I finally heard the entire CD. It lives up to every expectation I initially had, and then some.

This album is not only a good addition to any jazz enthusiast’s library, but for those who have heard enough of Norah Jones, Michael Buble, and prefer to hear non-vocalized/purely instrumental Jazz song, this is a good place to start. The songs are soothing, definitely, but unlike the jazz mostly lost in the coffee shop buzz (or bookstores, or those that lulls you to sleep), a lot of tunes in this album really, really, really stands out. For instance, I have not heard of many jazz songs more upbeat than the sixth track, named Linus and Lucy. I have not heard of many jazz songs that has as much of a "Good Grief" feel than the first track, Good Grief. The character songs found in this album, which includes Shroeder, Charlie Brown, and Linus and Lucy, all exudes so much personality that feels exactly like their own. This taken in itself makes the album worth the purchase even for those uninitiated with Peanuts who wants to know what the characters are like. Sadly, I would like to hear tracks of Snoopy (especially Snoopy, him being my all time favorite cartoon character), Woodstock, Peppermint Patty, and Sally, all of which the album doesn’t have.

Still, this is one of the best music CD’s I’ve been given (and currently own). Just by putting on the CD to my sound system is enough to start making me imagine sceneries from Peanut comics strip, of which I really love. Reality can be an awful place to step in so in the meantime, I’m gonna go back to listening to this album and let it take me to a world where characters are deformed and where dog who live on rooftops type, woo, eat, sleep and imagine himself being a flying ace.

Yesterday was one awfully noisy night. Being a day before Chinese New Year dictates that politicians, wanting to kiss up and be gaudy with Fil-Chi populace, grab the opportunity to make an ostentatious display of a program rife with protracted speech and awful song-and-dance numbers. I mean, that’s cool, much as I loath to say this, I admit there’s something they will gain in return for granting such favor to the Chinese (namely, more votes. That’s the bottomline. Or, more like, always the bottomline). It’s also funny how I heard feedbacks from those who attended that they needed umbrellas to barricade Counselor (? Like I care) Miles Roces’ spits.

However, I don’t really think the program is worth anything at all, except it’s meant to keep disgruntled-but-reticent neighbors awake all night. The music they played yesterday are downright awful, but what makes it worse is that these song WERE performed on stage by "aspiring" (or is it frustrated-aspiring) singer. This made the chosen mainstream music to the point of being nearly a national anthem (I’m pointing at you, Chou Hua Chien’s Peng Yow) even more painful to the ears, which is no small feat. The songs were so bad, I wanted to shout right out of my window "STOP! PLEASE, FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, SPARE US OF YOUR ATROCIOUS SONGS AND SINGING VOICES!" I couldn’t, because they couldn’t hear me and I’m too far away from the place where the program is taking place. By midnight, they still haven’t stopped, and I’m still awake because of that.

Chinese New Year is a holiday I really look forward to each year, almost to the same intensity as Christmas and New Year. However, I don’t look forward to the next time such program will take place. And of course, it will take place again next year. Spare me, please.

Anyway, happy Chinese New Year to all!

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Other’s reaction: Okay, Ching Shun, aren’t you being a little fussy that you have to resort to making an entry about running out of index cards?

Me: I don’t care! I ran out of index cards! This sucks!
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The truth is, yeah, I ran out of index card. The other truth is, I feel severely indigent when I do not have index cards. Index cards are so-very-much-uberly-superbly-extravagantly important to me. I use it as my study aid. I use it as a means to put down my imagination on paper. Heck, I use it to collect words, a hobby I’ve developed a few months ago. Without index card, my existence is banal. Index cards of different color draws a vivid imagery of escape to this otherwise mundane world! And now I ran out of index cards, I hate it!

Okay, I exaggerated pretty much everything in the last paragraph. The point is, I ran out of index card and I feel severely unproductive without it. To those who want to know how I use my index card:

Red cards are where I write down negative words, or negative thoughts. Anything resembling the regurgitation of a blood is truly not a sight I would salivate to see.

Blue cards are where I write down positive words, or positive thoughts. Anything resembling the tranquility of the still lake is positive in my book.

White cards are where I write down everything else. White is unbiased. Males wear white. Females wear white. Whites are default, and whites are purity. Ambidextrous. Ambisinister. Ambivalent.

So the next time you write a positive comment. I’ll write your name in my blue card. Now, if you ticked me off, your name belongs to red. The rest of you boring people out there belong to white.

Anyway, I have to dash out of my nearest bookstore to buy a new set of index cards.

A normal day, one filled with much lethargy and ennui, dictates that I start browsing the internet again in hope to find something that will keep me preoccupied.

Rather than take the path much taken by most male reaching puberty (you all know what I mean), I decided to check my friendster inbox, my myspace inbox and my yahoo mail to reminisce the good e-mails/messages I’ve sent and received through the years…

…which is quite sad as to how there are so many badly-written "friend request" private messages that are very mind-boggling, in the way they present themselves and in the way they ask for invitation. Reading up those messages warrant a lot of head-bangs-against-the-walls, something I really don’t feel like doing.

But anyway, I’m kind of in the mood to post some of them as a way of dissing them, so here goes:
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subject: a
message: pa add naman pls..
shane_17@wasted.com
             or
se7enteen@17.com
    thnx..u
comment: wasted? wasted from thinking up of the right way to ask for invitation, of which you still lacked? What’s with the subject anyway? Too lazy to think up of something interesting? And thnx..u? What the hell is that?

ok. but this is still pretty cool as compared to the rest, which I’m going to present to you right now.

subject: pls add
message: ready4showdown@yahoo.com
comment: You chose the minimalist laconic route. Here’s my laconic reply: I don’t wanna. What’s with the e-mail anyway? Let me give you a suggestion: try giving that e-mail when you submit your resume and bring a stopwatch as well to time how fast it takes before the HR rolls his/her eyes. Ready for showdown? Yeah, baby! (spoken in a very perfunctory tone)

subject: hi
message: add me up pls
jennifer_villa07@yahoo.com
i’ll be glad f u do so……….
comment: Ok, that was pretty nice, except you sounded a little desperate when you said "I’ll be glad f u do so……… (I had a hard time myself trying to count how many period you had in that message) A desperate woman is a real no-no to me. My impressions of you just somehow worsened when I read your profile, especially in the "who you want to meet" section.

By the way, you only need 3 periods, not 10…

subject: hi
message: good day!

pls. visit this site for a short presentation:

makeURL(”www.movie.ws/cathy0314/show”,”eHNsL21lc3NhZ2VzLnhzbA==”);www.movie.ws/cathy0314/show

for additional info.

makeURL(”www.movie.ws/cathy0314″,”eHNsL21lc3NhZ2VzLnhzbA==”);www.movie.ws/cathy0314

it might help you a lot.

God bless

Gilbert
comment: First of all, that was very thoughtful of you to give me links to movies considering that I only have a 56 K modem. And secondly, I hate your username (dreamboy). Lastly, I keep having a bad feeling that this is some sort of movie where some ghostly images suddenly pops out of my screen. (Which is why I still haven’t opened up that link) I’m keeping count of all my underwears in my closet and if you ever tried destroying any of them (not that it ever happened mind you), you’re gonna have to pay threefold.

You willing to do that? No? Then piss off!

subject: hi
message: wanna fuck?
comment: (disclaimer: I did not make that one up) Hello Gwen. Your picture, showing the bottom of your chin and the top of our chest (in a manner that your eyes are not showing) is quite tempting, to be honest. You probably are a real-life hottie or whatever.

However, I didn’t join friendster for profane activities. And to regurgitate your message back to you, who are now a suspended user of friendster, I don’t wanna f*** you. Now get outta my sight.

subject: hello mr.shun?!!!
message: m zham,and i wish to add you on my friendster!!!
but there seem to be a problem!!!
which is your e-mail add!!!

so if you wnt mind!!!
i will give you my add…

cavogz@yahoo.com

thanks and GODBLESS YUH!!!
comment: That was very nice of you. A much less fastidious friendster user might just add you. The only problem here is that I’m very fastidious. I don’t usually add friends whom I don’t know of, and if I do, it’s because that person aroused my interest (profile-wise, most of the time). Your profile, however, isn’t very interesting. I don’t feel obligated to add you.

But you tried. You really did try. The only beef I have is when you said GODBLESS YUH!!! I have no problem with the holier-than-thou greeting, but YUH? You might’ve as well said YA (to sound Texas) or YOU, which have just as much spelling as YUH, except it sounds 100 times more intelligent. What’s with all the exclamation points anyway? Are you a pep rally coach or something?
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Feh. Anyway, I’m going out now (I can’t stay home all day now, can I?). Please remember to send me those friend invites!

What’s with Sun Cellular’s obligatory 15-minute cut anyway?

For those not in the know, there’s a mobile phone service provider, called Sun Cellular Network, operating in the Philippines, that offers for a limited period of time and for a certain amount of money, a 24×7 call and text unlimited service. This means that within a given period, depending on how much money you have spent (for example, if you spent 100 pesos, which is almost 2 dollars, you get 7 days) you can call and send text messages indiscriminately. This was one of the best things to have happened in the Philippines so far, and funny is that it was only introduced last year.

Now, given, 15 minute would’ve been an acceptable cut-off back then, given the limited technology and the sudden inundation of Sun Cellular subscribers. Now, almost 1 year later, we’re seeing the same Precambrian/Ice Age/antedilivian ways 15 minute cutoff method! You have a limit of 15 minutes per call. Everytime you reach that time limit, the call is suddenly cut off and if you want to keep talking to your hottie chatmate (of which I probably have many. Just kidding!) you have to call all over again.

Why does Sun never do anything to ameliorate its problems? Areas with poor coverages from last year still have poor coverages one year later. 15-minute time limit did not extend. Worse still, there are moments (such as now) when I simply can’t connect a call to another Sun Cellular subscriber. I’m not sure this is what we call "quality service" (besides, isn’t it bad enough that we have to hear, or rather, tolerate Jay-R’s lame attempt at RnB everytime we visit a Sun kiosk?).

It gets really annoying whenever a call get cuts off just when the conversation is heating up, because I can imagine the following scenario happening at the exact 15- minute cutoff.

Scene A:
Boy: To tell you the truth, I love *cut*…. (he was going to say "I love cookies")

Scene B:
Girl: I have a confession to make. I’m no longer a *cut*… (she was going to say "I’m no longer a Britney Spears fan". Real good news that would be. I hope more people would make such confession.)

Of course, by the time they connected another call, they might’ve completely forgotten what was it they were supposed to talk about.

Yeah, right.

I challenged my friend Princess to a game of Yahoo! Literati (which is just a fancier name for Scrabble) just a few minutes ago. I figured: why not? This is a good test of my vocabulary erudition. Lately, I’ve read lots of stuff with intermediate level of english, and for the past 4 months my vocabulary have expanded considerably. I’ll probably kick her butt in this game.

How wrong I was! I was circumscribed by the choice of letters given to me, not knowing what to do with them, whereas Princess seemed to have no problem forming not so common words such as AORTA. She even resorted to trash talks saying that "It’s all about the wordplay". My arse got a good taste of her boots. Now that really feels horrible. Way horrible.

I guess I have to go back to perusing the dictionary again. Boo…

Anyway, happy birthday to Princess. It’s her birthday today, so maybe she just got lucky! Hah! That must be it!

(And people say I’m becoming more of a sore loser lately)

Lately, Yahoo Mail has proven itself falsely advertising how sophisticaed its system is. As an angry response from yours truly, I’m going to compose a letter for yahoo moderators.

Dear Yahoo Mail moderators,

Weren’t you the e-mail account that complacently proclaims to be able to distinguish between a "good e-mail" and a "spam"?

If that is so, then I really wonder how a person named Ivy Smith managed to shoehorn her e-mail titled "Place for guys, girls, men and women to have fun" into all my otherwise educational yahoo groups? I joined ecesmicro, feedlab, eces2003, and ecepro so that I will be educated and updated with its curricullum (at least, back when I was in school). Clearly, this isn’t the place for lonely singles to hang out it (they can easily find it elsewhere at americansingles.com, true.com, etc.)  now, is it? But that’s not all. How did I get an "E-mail notification" from Mate1? I don’t recall ever getting interested in subscribing to an e-mail that sounds like it’s another one of those, you know, "sites". And, gosh, don’t you think that allowing other e-mail notifications to find its way into my yahoo e-mail to be somewhat demeaning to your own account? Aren’t you supposed to be more satisfied the more customer you have? So why allow e-mail notification spams to get into our inbox, not in our bulk mails? You desperately want us to quit yahoo mail and join other e-mail accounts instead?

That’s not all. What’s with this attachment enclosed e-mail coming to my inbox every now and then, coming from people WHO ARE LEAST LIKELY TO SEND PORN VIDEOS WITH VIRUSES IN IT?! I’ve received e-mails from Larry Evangelista, Mickey Edward Lim, Dan Dizon, and even my real blood sister, with headings coming from N-Sync/ Mariah Carey songs they’re least likely to listen to, attached with porn videos that are virus-infected? You have got to be kidding me! So, I’m not gullible enough to believe that they will actually go through all the trouble of sending me these "spectacle", and I have never actually opened those attachments (some of my classmates, though, have become unfortunate victims), so why even bother? Who’s imitating them anyway? And why can they do this in an e-mail account that advertises itself to have "powerful spam protection - you only get to read e-mails you want"?

So once again, yahoo mail moderators, if any of you chance upon this blog/letter, please fix those problems I’ve mentioned. And try to take a hint that a yahoogroup named relsfor (which is actually the jargon for religion studies four) will never endorse an e-mail from interracialdating! Get your lazy ass up, fix your system and move those annoying e-mails to our bulk mail for gosh sakes!

Otherwise, we might as well switch to gmail!

The yearbook writeup for my friend, Larry Evangelista, goes like:

"If you see an intelligent-looking, Harry Potter look-alike wearing a LAPAGAYO shirt along Velasco, that’s Larry. Truly a born fighter, losing isn’t an option for him. Despite the fact that he’s known for his sarcastic yet funny remarks, he is still a dependable friend to everyone. A math lover since grade school, he also loves reality TV and videogames. He’s also a very active student, and most of all, a trustworthy friend. He’s truly an engineer to look out for."

The reason why I’m saying this is because just yesterday, I heard from a few of his friends that they consider this writeup beautiful. So, yeah, that’s cool, except they asked me a question I completely have no idea how to answer.

"Weren’t you the one who have written those?" asked Robert.

"Huh, since when?" retorted I.

"You don’t remember? How could you? The yearbook is like, the summary of a person’s milestone of his college career. This means whatever is written there is something that person will be remembered in DLSU, forever. And you have no idea you were responsible for Larry’s writeup?" lectured Corrine, complemented with a wry smile.

"Uh, no?" a confused me replied while almost scratching his head..

Has something similar ever happened to you? You said, did, wrote, or kicked something, and few days later you have no idea you’ve done something of that sort, yet everyone else seem to remember?

I’m not speaking only in terms of something wonderful you may have done. At certain point of our life, we may have said something that’s completely foot-in-mouth (i.e., completely tactless). We have no idea we ever said something of that sort, but people remember, took offense, and since then label you as the loud mouth who said something completely tone deaf.

We may lose awareness of our actions. People, however, do not. What this means is that there is not a single minute when we should act merely on whim, without consideration of what others may feel. We have to give thought to whatever it is we may end up doing.

:rollseyes:

But while I’m on the verge of being preachy (if not already), I still have one question: Did I really write those?

Ladies and gentlemen, for those who haven’t noticed, updating profiles have become the new friendster fad. Why is this? Because with the new "friend tracker" feature enabled, and showing everytime you log on to friendster, you can see who’s updated his/her profile, who’s uploaded new pics, who’s got new testimonials and who forgot to brush his/her teeth before smiling at the camera (and you can see food residue stuck between his/her dentures).

What you can do now, to warrant attention from friendster user with too much spare time, is change even the slightest info about you, and suddenly everyone’s flocking over you as if you’re distributing freebies they’ve never seen before. But one particularly catching change you can implement is to change your status. Used to be, a user only have to choice of Single, In a relationship, domestic partnership and married. Now, there’s a new option called it’s complicated?

Ok, so what is "It’s complicated" supposed to mean? Does it imply someone who is sort of in a relationsip but is sort of not? Does it imply someone who has the "collect and select" mentality? Does it imply someone who has multiple relationships; i.e. from having a little cyber fun at a certain "chatroom for the horny"? I can’t even begin to fathom the philosophy behind "it’s complicated". It’s probably an idea that only scholars such as Copernicus can have an idea of describing. I’ll leave all those nebulous ideas to the scholar who’d rather write theories than eat mango pies.

But, yeah, since it does make my face appear in the "friend tracker", therefore garnering attention from recent friendster users, I might as well chime in, jump into the bandwagon, by claiming that I have a complicated status. Yeah, that’ll work!

I see a bizarre parallel between the short-lived nature of fireworks to what’s been happening with my life lately.

It seems like just yesterday (when in fact it was last year’s December) when almost every single day was in itself an event with a lot of "Bang! Boom! Swish!" Memories of last year’s Christmas youth seminars, along with the party that came after, still lingers in my mind like ants to an unsealed cupboard of cookies. Suddenly, the distant and aloof nature of mine vanished, and now there’s nothing I long for more than companions. There’s nothing I long for more than being around with the group of friends I’ve been around with last December, and this weekend as well. The kid in me  wants to burst out and the adult in me wants to take a rest. I find myself weary of living in a competitive world and instead be surrounded by what used to be my youthful glee, now a prozac to the mundane world that’s driving me nuts.

The last four days before today, I was in a southern province of the Philippines, known as Zamboanga. The place is nothing spectacular: their malls are very run down, their technology is huge step backwards from the amenities urbane people (such as I) are accustomed to. The weather is a few fahrenheit above the usual hot weather of Manila. The bedroom I slept in gave me prolonged insomnia coupled with weird dreams of pretty girls I’ve never met. Yet, friends from the province came over to visit me. They brought me to beaches and mountains. Then they treated me to some of their possibly indigenous food. They failed to realize, though, that it’s not the places they have brought me that I’m amazed at. It’s their friendliness. Much as I tried not to, suddenly I felt a lot of emotional attachment to these people. Leaving them yesterday and knowing it’s going to take quite a long time before seeing them again lacerated me a lot.

Now that I’m back in Manila, I find myself tired of criticizing. I find myself tired of reading newspaper editorials. I find myself not deriving a lot of satisfaction in videogames anymore. I find myself tired of listening to bickering adults (who always dabble in boring business talks) and preferring the silly stories of bantering teenagers (even though sometimes they cover cheesy topics such as love and infatuation). I find myself tired of looking at classified ads (besides, most of them happened to be call-center infested). I find myself not so enthusiastic about blogs and internet forums anymore. I find myself too tired to move on and instead want to resign to a peaceful respite, only I prefer it to last LONGER than ever conceivable.

And then, I look outside, realizing how far away I am from the people I truly care about (with the exception of my parents, who most of the time live under the same roof as I). I realize that they have a life to go back to. They have to keep studying. They have to keep working. They have to stay attached to whatever attachments (physical, geographical or emotional) they have. Then, I become introspective, and realized that I have to do the same. There’s no single firework that last forever. This is the reason why we have to cherish every moment when suddenly a lot of fanciful sparkles are in the air. The time the noise have died down, all we do is wait; or, better yet, do something productive just to mollify the agony of waiting forever before another batch of fireworks start exploding.

I have to move on. And besides, Chinese New Year is in a few days.

Thank you, to all my friends in Zamboanga, for being so nice to me.