efficient time suckage

lelaina: well, i know this sounds cornball but i'd like to somehow make a difference in people's lives // troy: and I...I would like to buy them all a Coke

gasp! an update!

Although I doubt anyone checks this old thing anymore, for any extremely bored, have-looked-through-every new trailer at Apple quicktime and funny pictures at engrish.com friends that happen to straggle by, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you!

Fall semester sure whipped by like a tornado, with all the associated speed and fury. Suffice to say, the holidays is the creepy, green-skied, all-too-quiet eye of the storm. Sure enough, the battering will be picking up as soon as the New Year dawns. I am full of optimism. (insert extra tub of bitterness here).

Last night a friend asked me, "How was your 2005?" Funny, I haven't asked myself yet. So I thought, an end-of-the-year evaluation should be in order.

I am looking back, all the way back to January, rewinding the events as one would an old videotape that had just rolled credits, without stopping the video first. I feel like an entire lifetime is backtracking before my eyes. (Is it like this every year? I don't know.)

In reverse order I can make markers -

of crushes: the squirrel, Mr. "Kylie", the abominable Aa, the cunning Canadian, the rockstar, the abominable Aa (recurring theme), the dance partner, Soles-san.

of places I was in: New York, Florida, Cambridge, New York, Florida, New York, (Japan), Manila, Punta Fuego, Manila, Boracay, Manila, (Japan), Cambridge, Chicago, Cambridge, New York

of memorable and other traumatic events: Universal Studios, Christmas, fall semester "ends", Pride and Prejudice, drunken response papers, English 159, Lolita, failing midterm, BS57, e-mails, senior bar (seeing A), HSA 27, senior bar (seeing Aa), mom visiting, MCAT scores, sisters visiting, birthday party, Florida with Ging and Nic, MCAT exam, summer summer summer, did I mention summer?, end of Junior year spring, Eliot Fete, Chicago, Ghungroo, Prado's visit, Cultural Rhythms, Chem 27, Final exams

of revelations: life will be OK, life will be dreadful, life is meaningless, life is meaningful, my life will be worth something, my life is worth nothing, friends are everything, love is everything, love is nothing, the future is bright, the future is bleak...you get the picture

of things I've purchased, of friends I've called, of friends I've avoided, of letters I didn't write, of people I didn't like, of places I didnt' see, of things I didn't do...

To move forward, one must look back, but how does one arrange the things and the nothings that were? What exactly does one have to do? I'm sure I am not alone when I say, I am trembling with fear when I think of the coming new year.

This is it. This is the battle I've longed for ever since I began obsessing over Lord of the Rings and other big epic we-must-save-the-world-or-die movies/stories; except the demon is within, as is the fear that needs to be conquered.

I hope you have a happy new year. A victorious one. A glorious one. I hope you overcome all the challenges that wait at your door and I hope that you'll still sing, when you're up to your neck in shit. (Beckett)


Alas, September is nearing its end and I've never been sadder to see it go. On the 10th Nic and I flew down to Florida, joined by Ging by the 12th. We stayed at an amazing hotel right by the beach and spent much of our time either by/in the water or watching tv in our room. We swam in the Atlantic and watched the sunrise over Europe.

Hauled ass to the dorms on the 15th and was greeted with a belated birthday party on the 17th. To kick off senior year, we hit up Pub Night and danced the night away. OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH-SIX!!

Shopped for classes on the 19th (picked up English, History, Bio, Japanese and Philosophy) and despite the fact that I had several boxes left unpacked, a thesis proposal due and already a week's worth of reading to be done, I welcomed my sisters to Cambridge on the 23rd. We drove to New Hampshire, met new family members, toured Boston (and loved it more), pimped up the dorm. (It was hard to say goodbye, but now I try to keep my room clean to make myself feel as if they're still here).

October is looking to be just as promising: a field trip to the Butterfly Place on Sunday, wrapping up Madame Bovary on Tuesday, dinner at my favorite restaurant on Thursday, birthday party on Friday and Columbus Day weekend.

Granted I haven't been sleeping, I have more work than I can handle, already behind in the job search and a daunting thesis to embark on, I'll keep my hopes up that this will be a good year.

How to..

1.Make me smile
tell me I'm funny. fool around. be a dork. smile at me.

2.Make me cry
tell me a sad story. make me laugh really hard.

3.Make me mad
be insensitive. be selfish.

4.Make me like you
be yourself. be open. loosen up. make fun of yourself.

5.Make me proud of you
if you're brave enough to fall. if you're strong enough to pick yourself up. if you're wise enough to ask for help.

(what happened to 6??)

7.Ease my temper
make fun of me. play with my hair.

8.Wake me up
don't even think about it! but if you must, do it gently. whisper.

9.Make me feel kilig
hold my hand. write a letter.

10.Make me say the truth
ask me. (but in general one wouldn't think to ask, because I'm pretty good at BSing.)

11.Shut me up when I talk a lot
not possible.

12.Tell when I'm annoyed
when i'm extremely sarcastic (and i mean out of this world bitter because i'm generally sarcastic).

13.Tell when Im bored
*yawn* ... mmm hmm.. uh huh.. yeah... *yawn*

14.Tell when Im drunk
dancing too much. laughing too much. speaking too much (and loudly!)

15.Keep me as a friend
i'm easy - good conversation. so if you can answer phone calls/emails/IMs, that should do.

16.Make me dance
as Prado once said "just add alcohol"

17.Make me fall in love
seduce me with your quick wit and your dashing smile
ask me how i'm doing

18.Make me fall out of love
love me not

19.Make me say goodbye
just ask me to

A world without weeds.

Watched Constant Gardener today. As my friend Sheena and I like to say, I had my fix of social consciousness for the week. More seriously however, it made me not want to have children in this world. It made me want to jump off a building and die. I had a flashback of one of my Professor's lectures. Political philosophy is about what kind of world you want your children to live in. Or at least that is why we care. (Sometimes it seems as if philosophy has no room for sentimentality, but in the end, does it not have humanity at the core of its quest?) But perhaps rather than fear the potential for harm and suffering in all that we are, in all that we do and in all that we live, we'll be better off trying to make the world better for the next person - a family member, a friend, a lover, a stranger.

On a lighter note, saw the trailer for Brokeback Mountain. I'm excited to see how the Heath Ledger-Jake Gyllenhaal pair-up can pull it off.



































Atlantic City was fun. Walked four miles and the closest I got to the ocean was from where I shot those pictures. The Atlantic will be my backyard for few days in a few days, so I'm not too bummed.


one corinthians

If I speak the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres. Love never fails.

Going to the beach tomorrow. Wheeee! Well, really we're going to Atlantic City. Hopefully while in the casino, my aunt and uncle will let me hang out at the beach. I haven't been there in almost ten years. I remember being excited about dipping my feet in the Atlantic Ocean. I hope the weather will be lovely.





















Sara: That gets me off.

Sam: You're easy.
Sara: No. With you I am.

Who wouldn't be with Christian Bale?

OK movie. Good soundtrack. Lots of good-looking people. Promising plot. Disappointing ending. More and more movies have come to my attention with the same apparent deficiency. Maybe I'm the problem; I'm looking for something that isn't there. Closure? Perhaps when one is watching/reading a story one already has a bias on how things should turn out. With art, we're not merely waiting for things to unravel like we do with life; with art, we're expecting to be moved. To be jolted. Right now, my senses are only willing to resonate with awakenings that don't make you want to go back to the way things were, with stories of letting go and never looking back to fix what is broken. Tomorrow, I'll want the complete opposite. As Wilde pointed out, art is about the spectator. If I could rewrite the ending, I'll let Sam be with Sara, but that's probably only because I think I'm like her.

It baffles me that I can't write when I'm happier. On the phone all day, online when not - in constant contact with friends. I only want to write when I'm sad. I talk when I'm happy. Based on the minutes I've consumed on my phone (thousands), compared to how little I've blogged, it's pretty clear than I'm more happy than not.

Happiness: Ings, Ji and Yna. Blockmates and summer babies' quasi-surprise party. Sisters. Unlimited Nights & Weekends. Rollover minutes. YM emoticons. iPod. Oscar Wilde.
Sadness: the habit of reveling in sadness

three times seven





I think it was Julia Ormond as Sabrina who said "I must've been taking pictures all my life, long before I even had a camera."

Funny/sad phone episode with Prado last night. We must've been on the phone for four hours, sometimes talking, mostly not. It was such an Oedipus Rex night (minus the incest) - when a truth was unraveled and the only seemingly sane thing to do is gouge one's eyes out. (Don't get any ideas, Prado, it's just an analogy. It's going to be okay, meng. Carry na lang. Kung kaya ko, kaya mo rin. Love naman kita baby.)

She said, "I wish I were seven again, so I can do stupid things and forget about it after 2 seconds." Watching my little cousin, it amazes me how much children can tolerate: inconstancy of attention, temporary neglect, outright rejection. But they never give up, they go on pestering and nagging, single-mindedly pursuing a simple objective: to be loved. Maybe at 21, not much of that has changed. We're still as needy and insecure as we were 14 years ago. We just don't have the same courage as they do. We always feel like we have so much more to lose at this point in our lives. Do we?

"The greatest happiness love can offer is the first pressure of hands between you and your beloved." Stendhal is not good for me. But I am addicted. The first few days I couldn't put it down. Later I recognized, I had to, for it made me so miserable. Away from it I didn't know what to do with myself, and so I would fall into it. I hoped that it would exorcise all the longing that lingered, but it made it worse. Stendhal, no matter how vile he made being in love seem like, how utterly absurd ("in love realities obligingly rearrange themselves to conform with desire") and irrational ("From the moment he falls in love even the wiseset man no longer sees anything as it really is....He no longer admits an element of chance in things and loses his sense of the probable; judging by its effect on his happiness, whatever he imagines becomes reality"), still he colored it with a sliver of pathetic heroism.

I suppose I was going about it all wrong. If I wanted to stop being sick with love, it probably wouldn't help to read about why people do it, and how they fall into it. Far from being able to distance oneself from the feeling, one would even feel a greater inclination for it, reinforced by the act of placing oneself comfortably amidst a seamless narrative, forging bonds with countless, nameless, faceless others suffering the same miserable fate.

It didn't help to think of my actual situation either. It made me confused ("Torn between doubt and delight, the poor lover convinces himself that she could give him such pleasure as he could find nowhere else on earth"). I knew it wasn't going anywhere ("It only needs a very small quantity of hope to beget love") and I knew I didn't want to go on like this ("Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will").

It is common knowledge, the only way to cure an obsession is to find another, stronger one. The strongest love is often forged during childhood: the bond with one's parents, siblings, first pet, etc. So I found myself, as I did when I was three, in the presence of one of my first loves, the black and the white of a piano. I must've played for fourteen hours the other day, stopping only to eat, nap, answer the phone. I can't say I'm cured, but I've found a new disease. A month ago, alone in a hotel room in Japan, I was a glorious wreck. Now, still in general a mess, but at least, once and for all, finally over it. ("There are moments in violent and unrequited love when you suddenly think you are not in love anymore. It is like coming across a spring of fresh water in the middle of the sea.")

Stendhal is not good for me.

free at last
















Yes!! Done, done, done. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who phoned and wrote cards, posts, comments, e-mails and text messages. Thank you thank you thank you Suri for metaphorically holding my hand through the break times. Thank you thank you thank you Ji for celebrating the end with me! It feels kind of weird. Now I'm unsure what to do with myself. Even if I didn't let it take over my life this summer, studying for this test at least enforced some structure into my summer. Now, well, it's a whole lot of reading, watching TV and general house-bumminess for me.

Right after (well more like several phone calls after) I walked to the Strand and bought Harry Potter 6, The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde and Stendhal's Love. Ji and I had dinner at McDonald's and watched 40-year old virgin. (Watch it! It's wicked funny!) All in all, it was a perfect ending.

Jenny and her friends drove in yesterday from Chicago and we met up at the Met from where we walked to the Guggenheim. Shelby got us free tickets! I'm going to kidnap her (and her free tickets) several weekends from now and go museum crazy. We had dinner at the Hard Rock and wandered around Times Square a bit. I'm so tired (and broke) I just want to stay in for the rest of the summer, until Fort Lauderdale.

Off to breakfast and Harry Potter.

Mini Apple boxes. Yay! My ipod mini came today. Wheee!!

Doom is T-2 days. Eek! I've resolved to not freak out, but would definitely appreciate e-cards, e-mails, phone calls, text messages or comments of support. I've been pretty good this past week, no blogging (as obvious from the lack of updates) and not spending more than an hour each day online. (To be honest though I've just found a different distraction. Piano. I think I spend 8 hours playing and 4 hours studying a day.)

I'm a little bit worried that I'm not going to fall asleep the night before my exam. I've been so good with sleeping. My favorite part of training for the MCATs has been training myself to sleep 8 hours straight each night. But I think my nerves are getting the best of me. Last night I couldn't sleep at all! Tsk tsk...

Anyway, to my beloved friends, think of me, and send me good vibes! Talk to you all soon!!

hoops and yoyo
















Sometimes, friendship is a decent conversation at the 47th St. McDonald's.


Ji is the pink one. We're just a couple of wide-eyed little dolls in the big city. We met up at the library (yes! it's my new favorite place) and walked to the McDonald's for a late lunch/early dinner. I'm going to miss all this time that I (despite MCAT prepping, seem to think I) have this summer for long talks.
I love you, Ji. It might just be that nothing will ever come easy, at least not the things that we want most. If only wanting were enough, since sufficient suffering comes with that. It turns out we actually have to do things. And, it turns out that sometimes, no matter what we do, we can't seem to find ourselves closer to what we want. So when you find yourself asking, what am I supposed to do now? Go to the nearest Blockbuster and rent out Galaxy Quest. Never give up, never surrender.
----
Troy: There's no point to any of this. It's all just a... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know... a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle... and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.

the city beckoned


and i answered its call. I went to the New York Public Library today to do my practice test. Well, two-thirds of it. It was the perfect place to study - the nice long tables, gorgeous ceiling, the cool airconditioning. Even the people around me gave the perfect simulation for an actual exam. All in all, I had a productive day.

I don't know why I ever hated New York. It seems that it's everything a city is supposed to be. It's so easy to get around and there are so many public spaces where people can just sit and be. After a late lunch I sat down at Bryant Park behind the library. They even have these bookshelves where you can grab a book to read while you're passing your time.

Maybe it's the first time that I'm seeing New York with the independence that the city requires of its inhabitants and visitors. I used to think New York was a hard lonely place - that's why I hated the tourists who crowded the streets and covered up its emptiness. But I suppose we carry our own loneliness, and it's only now I've learned that I'm everything but alone. As with loneliness, you can carry the love and support of those who care about you.

Did I change this summer? I can't tell. Something is definitely different. I'm happier. Not giddy, not delirious. Not even not-sad. Less afraid. Less controlled. More certain? No, more hopeful. Ready.

On repeat: Be still my heart (Postal Service)

Oh how you laughed
At my complete lack of grace.
But I could not recall
A more perfect fall
Cause when I looked up into your eyes
It didn't hurt at all.
And I thought, be still my heart...

hell and back

Prado said this morning "We just keep on digging ourselves deeper holes here [in Manila], hoping that our planes will pull us out when it's time to leave." Planes won't do it. Over 8,000 miles away and mine still got deeper. But you know what works? Friends helping you up.

That's the big lesson from this summer's non-internship. I love you all! Thanks for everything.

the OC sings to me

New season starts September 8. Whee!!
12 more days till doomsday. Gaah! I'm going to go insane.
On other news, Abu Dhabi is out this summer. My sister called to say it's not going to happen. Lucky for her, my other sister is making up for it by getting me an ipod! Whee!! I told you Prado, we will join each other very soon. I might just run away to Boston, or make for Florida two weeks early. Or I could hang around New York, too. What to do? What to do??

If she wants me (Belle and Sebastian)
I wrote a letter on a nothing day
I asked someone “Could you send my letter away?”
“You are too young to put all of your hopes in just one envelope”
I said goodbye to someone that I love
It’s not just me, I tell you it’s the both of us
And it was hard
Like coming off the pill that you take to stay happy
Someone above has seen me do alright
Someone above is looking with a tender eye
Upon your face, you may think you’re alone but you may think again
If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy
They’d write it on my grave, or when they scattered my ashes
On second thoughts I’d rather hang about and be there with my best friend
If she wants me
And far away somebody read the letter
He condescends to read the words I wrote about him
And if he smiles, it’s no more than a genius deserves
For all his curious nerve and your passion
I’m going deaf, you’re growing melancholy
Things fall apart, I don’t know why we bother at all
But life is good and “It’s always worth living at least for a while”
If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy
They’d write it on my grave, or when they scattered my ashes
On second thoughts I’d rather hang about and be there with my best friend
If she wants me
If you think to yourself “What should I do now?”
Then take the baton, girl, you better run with it
There is no point in standing in the past cause it’s over and done with
I took a book and went into the forest
I climbed the hill, I wanted to look down on you
But all I saw was twenty miles of wilderness so I went home

suddenly lonely


I watched Florida drive away in a minivan and now I'm all alone. I could say with some regret, "If only I had studied while in Manila." But I won't, because I wouldn't mean it. I wouldn't exchange that time for a million weeks in all the theme parks of the world. It's probably better this way. I should be able to study much more efficiently now. At least there are five empty rooms in the house without computers/internet where I can set myself away from distraction.

I had a panic attack this morning after scoring abysmally on my first practice test. Sometimes I think maybe it's not meant to be - that I'm not supposed to be a doctor. But I forget that that language is reserved for romantic love, or things that have more to do with luck (which I suppose includes romance). Not for life's dreams. We may not be 'meant to be' with certain people we strongly desire. We may not be 'meant to be' lottery winners. But how the rest of our lives unfolds, that is mostly up to us.

Thanks to Dita and Jen for cheering me up! I'm only too lucky to be surrounded by people who love me everywhere I go.

I should stop blogging.

Happy birthday, Ma!

insensitive

In the book I'm reading, one of the women complained about her husband: You don't know what it's like being married to Hal. He's like a big black rubber ball. Nothing you do makes an impression on him.

Maybe she should freeze him, then he'll explode. Physics. Chemistry. MCAT.
Inspiration comes from the most unlikely places.

plagiarism




"But what could be odder than the way that books which chime with one's condition or stage in life insinuate themselves into one's hand?" (4)

and so does Doris Lessing's love, again. I bought this book six years ago, read a couple of pages, and against the self-imposed rule of never leave a book unfinished, I dropped it without giving it a second look. But this summer, these words insinuated themselves:

"There seems to be a rule that what you condemn will turn up sooner or later, to be lived through. Forced to eat your vomit" (2). And later, "...the hard law ... says you must suffer what you despise" (9). Some people are better than others in living what they preach. But I suppose most of us are caught in the middle, pulled on the one hand by the logic of living with the restraint required to maintain one's sanity and on the other by the desire to know what lies beyond the rules (the paradigmatic forbidden fruit, borne from the tree of knowledge). Or plain recklessness. Ultimately, the universe has its way of making us understand, live how the other half lives.

I've been exchanging study hours for time rewards to read a few pages of this book. I don't get past more than a few pages, because the words jump at me, pulling me back, to read them over and over and over.

"Her body burned more fiercely, if this were possible. Burn, the word we use, shorthand for such shameful, such agonizing physical symptoms. Quite poetic, really, the word burn." (109)

"She was raging with desire. (Rage: another good word, like burn.) But why describe it, since there is no one who has not felt the mix of anguish, incredulity, and -- at the height of the illness -- a sick sweet submersion in pain because it is inconceivable that anything so terribly desired cannot be given, and if you relinquish the pain, then the hope of bliss is abandoned too." (120) This part is all too familiar, the madness that accompanies being 'in love'. I remember saying these words to myself some three years ago. To let go of the love that caused so much pain is, to let go of love. Why would anyone, for we all crave to love, even consider this a viable option? Yet now, looking back, I don't know why it should have been so hard at all. The phantom was a coverup for shame. I just couldn't see through it.

(Is it repeating itself now? Youth is a fountain of mistakes. But today I am not raging. And today there is no pain. Perhaps the hope of bliss has long been abandoned, with the quiet acceptance that this life comes in overlapping phases and the only reasonable hoping left to be done is the hope that this too shall pass.)

"There seems to be a general agreement that being in love is a condition unimportant, and even comic. Yet there are a few more painful for the body, the heart, and -- worse -- the mind, which observes the person it (the mind) is supposed to be governing behaving in foolish and even shameful ways...For people are too often in love, and they are usually not in love equally, or even at the same time. They fall in love with people not in love with them as if there were a law about it, and this leads to...if the condition she was in were not tagged with the innocuous 'in love', then her symptoms would be those of a real illness." (140) Psychosomatic. Emotional anguish manifest in physical pain.

The book is an antidote. There is no better cure for emotional distress than the detached, clinical study of it.

this will probably be my last post for a long time. aside from the fact that i must focus on studying from now until the 19th, i would probably have nothing interesting to write for all of august. i'm coping with missing home pretty well. i must be since i'm constantly smiling. it's kind of amazing - i feel as if at the back of my eyes is this recording of all the things that's happened these past two months, on perpetual playback. my cousins must think i've been pretty spacey of late. of course i miss everyone, but i don't feel at all that i've lost anything. in fact, i gained a lot. i love them all so much more now. i didn't even know that there could be more of this...

anyway, pictures are up. please visit my multiply site (see links). it will make you laugh, i promise! summer craziness only the way we know how - no limits, just reckless abandon.

as for now, i'll leave you with these two songs from the OC, the soundtrack of my life. as David mockingly noted, everything goes back to the OC...

Hello Sunshine
(So hard to say goodbye
Meaning it today
I've said goodbye before
Leaving you alone
By the sea
So hard to say goodbye)
Hello sunshine
Come into my life
In honesty it's been a while
Since we had reason left to smile
Hello sunshine
Come into my life
I'm a minger
You're a minger too
So come on minger
I want to ming with you
In honesty it's been a while
Since we had reason left to smile
Hello sunshine
Come into my life
You're not so innocent
You're a disgrace to your country
If you fled a million miles I'd chase you for a day
(If I could be bothered)
Hello sunshine
Come into my life

Honey and the Moon
Don't know why I'm still afraid
If you weren't real I would make you up
now
I wish that I could follow through
I know that your love is true
And deep
As the sea
But right now
Everything you want is wrong,
And right now
All your dreams are waking up
And right now
I wish I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom
Where no one lives
Remember when we first met
And everything was still a bet
In love's game
You would call
I'd call you back
And then I'd leave a message
On your answering machine
But right now
Everything is turning blue
And right now
The sun is trying to kill the moon
And right nowI wish I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom
Where no one lives
Freedom
Run away tonight
Freedom, freedom
Run away
Run away tonight
We're made out of blood and rust
Looking for someone to trust
Without A fight
I think that you came too soon
You're the honey and the moon
That lights
Up my night
But right now
Everything you want is wrong
And right now
All your dreams are waking up
And right now
I wish I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom
Where no one lives
Freedom
Run away tonight
Freedom freedom
Run away
Run away tonight
We got too much time to kill
Like pigeons on my windowsill
We hang
around
Ever since I've been with you
You hold me up
All the time I'm falling down
But right now
Everything is turning blue
And right now
The sun is trying to kill the moon
And right now
I wish I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom
Where no one lives

mirth

residual high from my stay in manila has made me forget how much i hate new york in the summer. it was always too hot and the city offered no place for refuge or amusement due to the deluge of tourists. but now everything is foreign and familiar all at once: the neat rows of identical houses, the american cars, the clean streets, the welcome summer heat. i'm lovin just about everything right now.

my trip was uneventful. i couldn't meet up with my cousin because i missed the train to yokohama. after mailing her a care package i went straight to the hotel, bathed and crashed on the bed. i worried that i wouldn't be able to spend the night alone - not after all the goodbyes (said and unsaid), not after everything i've just left behind. but i have no more room for sadness. this summer is for happiness.

prado thanks for kidnapping me every tuesday and all the other bloomfield days. i know and you know my occasional resistance was a mere farce. we're crazy. that's us! chuck shame, dignity and self-respect at the door. embarassment is our middle name and scandal is the name of the game. yns good times and bad, i'm with you girl. i'll miss our random philosophical ramblings. i love you, i love myself, what's not to love when you're self-aware? so much for swearing off alcohol - but all in moderation. "beer is like gold" - i could only wish i had that kind of passion. david token white boy, thanks for letting me make fun of you all the time - as well as laughing every time! you were our ticket to just about everything, above all the band's circle itself. to you i've already said too much one hundred times over. lucky for me you're "amiable" ;-)

prashimodo, athens, jer i will see you east coasters very soon. don't be mad at me for not spending as much of the summer with you because i'm sure to be visiting you individually within the next few months. it's high time i drop my lazy you-come-to-me attitude. RI, PA, DC - watch out coz i'm coming to town!

nix, jells so many plans, so little done. oh well. i look forward to going crazy with you two come fall. we'll show mae and hee won how it's done in manila!

kresta mama-ba. my oldest friend. i love that we haven't changed - not in the ways that really matter at least. i love that we can talk with the same intimacy as if we'd never been apart. i love how you understand me so well. i love you. talk to you soon.

mike mike mike. since you hardly spent anytime with me this summer i have nothing to say to you. call me when you get in.

random summer moments - car rides - table reservations for alex dumas, sandra cisneros and isabel allende - bloomfields! - dancing - dancing with louie - singing with louie - talking to louie - wearing a louie shirt - redbox "i will survive", "dancing queen" - redbox lapdance from danny - 21st birthday serenade from bollywood live band - getting lost to punta - "never" lying to my parents - pool pics - falling into the pool! - marco polo - july 19 - loitering in eastwood - waiting by the parking lot exit - "i get lost.. in your eyes" - "for you i bleed myself dry" / "bakit ngayon ka lang" - sleepovers - hi ma'am, haiku - jay jay sando moment =) - white chicks "makin my way downtown..." (just a thought: how fast do you think vanessa carlton can walk if she expects she can get as far as a thousand miles by "tonight"?) - making fun of everyone - "why not?" - meeting the parents "tita!" - bday surprise for yna - david's wowowee face - david's dance - fighting - making up - friendster stalking

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i'll post pictures up soon. love love love!

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tonight's the night that shit's going to hit the fan...not if i can help it! the summer motto's been fun, fun, fun so i'm not going to let anything ruin the perfect summer memories. need to pack today, but more importantly, i must stow away all this emotional baggage that's been dragging since last week. i've spent too long hanging out on the brink of falling in love and now that certain events have forced me to make a decision, take the plunge or abandon post, i suddenly fear the loss of the comfort of complacently, indulgently grazing this place. but as with most things all i can say is "oh well" and move on. i just need to let it go. what's the point in holding on if neither he nor i can brave the risk of pursuing this?

for what it's worth, i feel as if i'm handling this much better than freshman year fiasco. maybe i like d so much more than a.