my darling popples is lost. =(

my darling popples is lost. she got lost when my dad brought andie to ballet class. i'm really not sure how it happened but she's lost. i'm starting to come to terms with my grief. i feel like i lost a child. i love all my dogs with all my heart and she was especially special because she's only barely 4 months old.

cebu!!!!

kaka's coming to cebuuuuuuu!!! hahahaha. i'm so excited, i can hardly sit still!!! we were just talkingabout it.. innocently toying around with what-ifs.

kaka: i'm JUST going to ASK. JUST so i know...

2 hours later:

kaka: it's final!! my ticket is bought and paid for. looks like i'm really going. i asked my mom the night before and she said yes!

hahahahaha. classic.

man, we are going to have so much fun here.

PMS

aiyahh.. i'm DYING of PMS. it's not even funny anymore. i feel like a walking waterbed. even my feet are swollen! i had to pick out the thinnest socks i could find to wear with my sneakers because my feet refused to get inside the f*%$ing shoe. and at the gym, i felt like a beached whale next to all those skinny people barely breaking a sweat while i was there huffing and puffing away on the crosstrainer. hot flashes. EATING binges. mood swings and jiggly everything from water retention. even my wrists feel fat. waaaahhhh... =(

on the bright side, PMS just lasts few days. then the ickiness of it all begins. being a woman isn't a joke. men should at least at one point of their lives know what it feels like to have a period. and all the mood swings and physiological side effects due to hormonal wack-out.

ode to the nice guy

i have always had more guy friends that girl friends, even if i did go to an all-girls catholic high school for the most part of my life. "one of the boys" has always been my place in life. i got this off another journal. this is for all my guy friends.

Ode to the Nice Guys
This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal...

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute, beautiful, smart, funny, sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern.

This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl's every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style. This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they're at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don't end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldnt worry about it.
This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you'd ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor.

This is also for that time she didn't have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing serious between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: "Oh, but we're just friends!" And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you're nice like that.

The nice guys don't often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don't seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can't. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches.Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as "Oh, he's too nice to date or he would be a good boyfriend but he's not for me or he already puts up with so much from me, I couldnt possibly ask him out!" or the most frustrating of all: "No, it would ruin our friendship." Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can't figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I'm going to sleep with this complete ass now!).

But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn't last forever.There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single. So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know youre sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

the drama unfolds

my computer is mute. i think my antiquated speakers have finally given up on me. i'm pretty worried that the other parts aren't far behind. the monitor is showing signs of dying out too. on the upside, an excuse to buy a new one. on the downside, that's WAAAAY out of my budget. oh well, we'll see how it goes.

on the neither up nor down side but just plain soap opera-ish as my life was meant to be. anthony's mom called me up. this isn't the first time she's done this since we've broken up but this is quite unexpected since we broke up more than a year ago.

tita: hi! i called you because i heard you were getting married!"

uh, no. we are not. no wedding bells ringing anytime soon. anyway, she goes on with some small talk about her new negosyo and stuff... i sit there on my couch mmhmming and ah reallying along. waiting. waiting for her to bring it up. part of me thinks that i should have just made some excuse not to talk but part of me knows that this will never go away until you drive in the nails. she talked about her plans to renovate the house since it's just her and tonton now. she mentioned her other money-making plans for her and tonton which is basically constructing a house in their pretty big backyard and renting it out to executives. she went on to mention the real reason why she called. if you haven't guesses right now, you must be special. =P

she asked, in so many words, if there was any hope of us getting back together. she said ton was really depressed and that he was well... languishing in misery to put it shortly. he was back into music though and was thinking of leaving for malaysia for two years. curious. somehow, she kinda asked me to talk to him or do something to stop him from leaving.

it was touching that she still thought of me as part of the family. but at the same time i was irritated at the burden that she placed on me. i loved him with everything i had and more for the past 5 years. although i still do care, it's not the same. there is no hope of reconciling. no hope of rekindling our romance. there's just no hope. i've passed the point of no return. i told her all this (even if it killed me inside to do it) in kinder words of course. i owe her alot and hurting her wasn't something i relished. she was there for me during our breakup and gracious enough to tell me the truth when everyone else sugarcoated it or avoided it or told me the mandatory its-going-to-be-okay when in fact it wasn't. she told me to move on. find someone else and forget.

anyway. ending this overly sappy whiny blog. the shit just got shittier. on the same day, a few hours after we talked his cousin texted me and asked if we could meet because she was really worried about ton. man... when it rains it pours. anyway, i kinda put that off for a while. in other words, ignore till i come up with some sort of action that stands on my principles but doesn't make me the heinous bitch.

i'm happy. i'm in love and i'm going to hang on to this for as long as i can.

the sleeping pill

he calls me up everynight but he doesn't have anything in particular to talk about. we "talk" for about two hours until he gets sleepy... which is actually me doing all the talking and rambling and him eating his midnight snack and watching tv and "mmhmm-ing" to the stuff i say and sporadicaly sharing some of his thoughts every now and then. sometimes we don't say anything at all for about 10 minutes. i'm staring into space or trying to get sleepy and i can hear the tv on on his end. basically, he just calls me as if to spend the last minutes of consciousness with me before he dozes off. i think it's awully sweet even if it is kinda odd. it's kinda like we're lying next to each other... only we're not.

stress mess

gawd.. this getting-a-job stage in one's life can be SOOOOO stressful. MORE stressful that the actual job itself. a part of me wants to just settle and get any job i can find so people would just shut up about it already and the other part wants to wait it out and really go for something that i love. i've kind of decided that i want to teach but since you have to wait for the schoolyear to start, waiting might take a while. more than making money, i believe in being fulfilled and happy.. the money will just come. but i don't know.. maybe i'm just too idealistic and sometimes you really do have to settle. there's only one other person i know who thinks like this and he isn't doing too well. i'm so afraid of ending up like him too. well, we will see. one day at a time.

on a lighter note, i got my self a pair of really cute and really really really cheap sunglasses.. in the name of summer. 175 Php. beat that! and it doesn't have that fake designer name slapped on to the lens or anything. it just doesn't have a name which i think is cool.

buikd weekend coming up and i'm so excited. this should be fun. just my friends and a whole house to ourselves up in the mountains. yipee!!

happily ever after

valentines has come and gone like frenzied love-making. you wait and wait and wait for it and when it finally happens, it's over all too soon. we had a full course dinner at tinderbox and then spent the rest of the night just talking, goofing around his house and ate mrs. fields chocolate cookies (my favorite forever and ever and ever) which i thought was perfect.

since i had the time, and the inspiration... i made a little memento for our first valentine together. it was a blue box which i decorated with hand-painted pop ups to look like a grassy meadow on a sunny day and a kite was hanging from the top opening flap which said "pull if you love me." on the string i tied in hearts with the colors of the rainbow each written with a nice moment we had or something we did together and at the end was a little Sunshine Bear Carebear i bought. well, it looked like a kindergarten project... all colorful and giddy. but i loved seeing the smile on stanleys face as he pulled out the "suprise". he looked a bit disoriented at the thought of doing something a bit childish but i think he liked it. i got a great big hug and a million kisses.

yeah yeah yeah.. i'm getting all mushy and gushy. but i might as well relish it because next valentines we could be suffering from a winter of discontent due to disillusion (see previous entry).

quote of the day: "the shortest valentine fairy tale: once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "will you marry me", she said "no". and the guy lived happily ever after."

the start of disillusionment

i'm about fucking ready to hurl that goddamn mother fucking contraption called PS2 out the window. it's been 7. yes, count them S-E-V-E-N long hours and they've still been at it. i've napped, i've chatted, i've had dinner, i've watched TV, i've blogged, i've read...

anyhow, reading through tons and tons of articles and magazines i came upon one of great interest to many who may be suffering the what-went-wrong lull in the once blissful we're-so-perfect beginning of a relationship."The Science of a Happy Marriage." apparently, any relationship on earth goes through these 4 stages just because men are men and women are women.

Stage 1: Romance
blame it on oxcytoxin to make him that storybook-mr.-perfect. otherwise known as a "bonding hormone", high levels of it make us hide irritating behaviours from each other. during this stage, our pheromones are so high the seperate male and female minds become like one. but like all good things, lovers' bliss ultimately ends and then begins another stage of the relationship.

Stage 2: Disillusionment
off come those rose colored glasses and our cerebral cortex begins to notice that our partner is "flawed". this usually happens after a few months or even a year of being together. our brain chemistry and our hormones begin to change and sometimes we may even start to feel irritation or anger towards our once pedestaled deities. the brain chemicals that took over during the early part of the relationship have dissipated, as if the rug was pulled out from under love. although alarming, this chemical letdown of both their brains is a normal stage, and necessary or helping two very different brain systems come together for life.

Stage 3: Power Struggle
those who have landed back to reality will normally try to change the person to who they were when they met. men and women who are going through this will have the added difficulty of being "neurally different" for the male and female brains think, act, behave and even love quite uniquely. generally a painful (gasp.) time, most couples don't realize that this could actually be the key to a long-term marriage. as the romance ebbs, men might want to be more independent and women might want to have more contact with her friends. picking at each other mercilessly often happens at this stage because of our differing attitudes towards independence. this is about 7-8 years into the relationship.

Stage 4: Awakening
finally, the light at the end of the tunnel but this will require one or both to awaken something that has been hiding beneath the surface. what alot of couples don't notice before the drifting apart is that there is another step that goes unnoticed. the couple becomes too close, erasing one another's individuality. a man might see his partners need to communicate, emotionality and desire for sensual romance as a waste of time. she might see her partners habits, hobbies, preoccupation with work and need for independence as dangerous and selfish. when the couple finally awakens, they realize that they've become too close to each other and must psychologically seperate. this means an understanding more than a separation. the thinking brain overrides the emotional responce of grief over their lost romance. men and women become more tolerant of each others differences. ultimately men realise that women are right: a relationship is most likely doomed if there isn't enough togetherness. and women realise that men are right: the relationship is doomed if there is not enough independence.

Stage 5: Long-term marriage
the balance between the prototypical male and female is a state of love called "intimate seperateness". couples love and are loved because they have learned to be happily different.

now, how in the hell do we get to marital bliss?

to foster intimacy:

• develop bonding rituals like date nights, talking on the phone etc.
• practice politeness and kindness with each other
• resolve aruguments rather than letting them fester.

to protect seperateness:

• appreciate each other's eccentricities and differences, especially as a man and a woman.
• develop different sets of friends. generally female for her and male for him.
• allow each other different domains.

"there's a tremendous value in knowing that your feelings towards each other
are likely to change over time and that change is normal. your brain chemistry
plays a role and there's no point in fighting it. instead, let biology guide you
towards understanding and natural long-term love. after all, human beings are
creatures of nature, and nature is very wise indeed."

the crossroads in life

while hanging out with the boys last night, i read this quote yesterday from a Lonely Planet coffee table book.

"Oftentimes, the regrets we have are not the things we've done but the
things we did not do."

True true. I've been quite the good girl and always taken calculated risks. i've never been one for careless abandon although i'd like to try it someday.

conversation with my bestfriend while shopping for a valentine present for her boyfriend:
me: (just finished telling her a weed related story that happened to me last sunday, which i will p.s.f.y.i)
maya: really? you know, i've always been tempted to try it. i mean, what possible evil could come from a plant?
me: i'm still undecided whether i will try other things.
maya: me too.

haha. sounds like we're in highschool. anyway, here's my p.s.f.y.i.

stanleys friends picked us up for drinks at shangri-la last sunday. on the way there, they decided to smoke up in the car and hotbox it. stanley doesn't smoke and neither do i but do the math... three potheads, no fresh air for 30 minutes. we were pretty hit and i didn't even know it till stanley refused to bring me home early because i had that "slow mo" look on my face. total food trip. hamburgers. fries. TWO virgin marys, sisig, grilled squid, garlic rice, ice cream. holy fuck. don't try it if you don't plan to gain 30 pounds overnight. not to mention cotton-mouth and your brain slowing down to a step away from being brain dead.

i get home.
hannah fixing herself a midnight snack: (gasp!!!) is it just me, or are you stoned?
me: it wasn't my fault!

disparity

sometimes i wonder if i've bitten off more than i can chew. on the outside i'm a tough cookie. nothing fazes me and i'm invincible. i can walk away anytime i want to. but on the inside i'm a lost little girl who's wandered outside her comfort zone lost in the jungle of giorgio armanis and bmws.

i've never belonged to this crowd and sometimes i wonder if i've wandered a little too far from home.

... then the phone rings and wakes me up from my thoughts. it's him. he calls to say goodnight. like he does everynight. relief drains the insecurities that build. maybe this could work after all...

dinner for two

is it just me or does the weather turn bad when you're sad? well anyway, it's heavily overcast... no hint of a sunny day suddenly peeping through the gray clouds that threaten to leak raindrops. heartache weather, i call it.

dinner with my mother last night. just the two us. something's always up when that happens.

her: your dad is almost moving out. we're just finalizing the arrangements.
me: tummy in knots. says nothing. what the hell do you say to that anyway??

she told me that it's come to a point where she couldn't get anything out of my dad except friendship and that she could not imagine living with a man who after 24 years of marriage just wants to be friends.

those words cut like a hot knife through butter.

that was my worst fear sitting infront of me. i cried in sympathy for her and in part because fear of suffering the same fate started to trickle in.

she asked me how i felt about it and whether i harbour resentment towards her for kicking him out. honestly, no. i told her that i will respect her decisions in her marriage because when i get married i want her to respect the decisions i make in my own marriage. i told her that it wasn't up to me and my sisters to decide what should be done but rather it was our responsibility to stand by both of them even if they're at opposite ends.

someone told me that people get married because apart from a select few who get famous, a large part of humanity lives in anonymity. marriage is then some way to have someone become a witness to your life.

so why pollute our mind with ideas like soulmates and forever? why fantasize about walks on the beach and magical sunsets? why romantisize the simplest things like flowers and chocolate? why fall in love?

because it feels damn good.

life happens when you're making plans

due to a quarterlife crisis i had a few weeks ago, i am currently unemployed. and the problem with being between jobs is having ALOT of freetime on your hands. on some days this could work, but on others i'm just climbing walls and willing time to move faster to when everyone gets off from work or school.

today was one of those days... time taking its sweet time. in the endeavor to preoccupy myself as not to start ringing up stanley every 20 minutes because i'm bored, i decided to put my desk in order. doing so, i found a piece of paper i scribbled on that started the chain of events that lead to my current bumness.

on it says: CHEZKA'S TIMELINE started JANUARY 8 2005

• currently working in Rustans. forsees no future in the retail business. despises working on Sundays. health in jeopardy
• JAN 16: will resign from Rustans even at the cost of getting free makeup to search for her future.
• JAN 16 onwards: will fish out more career options, obtains an uberbabe body in time for summer
• MARCH: will have obtained some sort of employment of at the very least have one in the works, hopes to have found contentment and meaning in life as well as a larger bank account
• JULY 2005: will have been dating stanley for a year now. the question now stands: is he the ONE?

if yes...

• currently waiting for a marriage proposal
• DEC 2005: anytime now...
• DEADLINE to be married: 25 years old
• JULY 2006: hypothetically speaking.. FINALLY ENGAGED
• FEB 2007: married
• 2009: pregnant
• later that year: gives birth to a beautiful baby girl names Amelie Skye, nickname Lily. quits job to be full time mother until offspring is about 7.
• now has Lily, the new love of her life. might have more kids if the first one doesn't prove to be too much trouble.

if no...

• will continue dating him until someone "better" comes along or until he turns into as asshole she can no longer tolerate... or until her heart is irreparably broken
• JULY 2006: contemplates leaving the country for that "experience" everyone keeps talking about.
• life could be anything by now!

Back to real time... a month and two days from that piece of paper:

no employment to speak of except being stanleys professional girlfriend. helping him with his new Apple store and redecorating his office. has decided to be a preschool teacher. will work partime as a newscaster for a local radio station while waiting for the new schoolyear to begin. will go back to school this june to get an education degree.

... sounds good.

la nueva vida

i read somewhere that the best writing either comes from the most bitter of experiences, or the most ingenious of writers. (thank you anonymous) as of the moment, i have neither claim to boast of, only that my inspiration comes from the lofty experience of being blissfully happy with my head screwed on the right way and my heart soaring through the skies on the wings of a new found love.

as inspiration would have it, here i am again chronicling my existence as a celebration (as of the moment) of this new and exciting rainbow colored everyday filled with fluttering butterflies and heart shaped doodles... and the narcissistic fear of living life in total anonymity.

although not intended but quite appropriately it's chinese happy new year. let's wait and see what the new year brings.


sour note of the day: "did you cut that yourself?" -my dad commenting on my new bangs.