Snippets of CPAs (Cries, Pains, and Agonies, That Is)*

The atmosphere is enveloped with an odd mixture of sweat and strong scent, the former conquering the latter’s presence as each minute ticks on the clock, as each square meter of the looped area is filled to the brim by rumer-mongers and anxious post-examinees. The sight of people bustling, jostling to take a good view on the standard-sized coupon bonds numerically posted on the board can be nauseous but I am staying my ground. Feeling groggy about having slept for only four hours, I drag my feet and swim through the sea of expectant onlookers. Like Moses in the Red Sea, I cross the seemingly endless mass of heads to search for names. 

Gawd, the result must be worth my sleep-deprived day, I say to myself. Let the name-hunting begin.

I am with three friends (whom I shall name Manggang Piko, Melong Mabilog, and Santol na Malibog) to browse through more than 40 sheets of paper scattered conspicuously all over the center’s walls. Santol na Malibog, one of the more courageous pals is, thank-god-jeezuzcrist, already done with the tortuous ritual, having passed the Exams last year. She is relieved to have overcome such torture but the other two are far from emulating her cool stance. In fact, as it happens, both of them are in a state of mental diarrhea, a picture of overly anxious souls who either wished this day has never come or they have never been born. 

It does not help that around us the atrocity of the two-week, two-days-in-a-week, two-subjects-in-a-day exams is beginning to pile up. While on our way to the place-that-must-not-be-spoken, we were already greeted with a scary sight of a runnning woman oblivious of the people around her and the vehicles that could have possibly delivered her straight to the morgue. She was in tears but I thought she looked cute. Only such agony, such irrepressible anguish could do that. I am certain she flunked the exams but as to the certainty of her slashing wrists tonight I’m putting a slight trace of doubt. Otherwise, she may just end up wallowing in self-deprecation, as if damning her soul would bring anything positive in her already demented psyche.

Right now, though, I am astounded by how much frailty and weakness and emotional instability people can display in public under such pressuring circumstances. At my right, I find a petite woman being consoled by her brawnish beau, the former numbing her ducts out on his arms while the latter caressing her endlessly like a pedophile-addicted uncle giving some candy to a crying nephew; I find the boyfriend’s action faked and heavily made up, every inch a clear indication not of love but of lust.
On one corner are two ladies seated at sturdy monobloc chairs, cellphones on one hand and hankies on the other, calling their moms and telling their folks in between sobs that they did poorly in the exams and that they wished it is already the Apocalypse because what they’re suffering from as of the moment is more than they could bare. It is interesting to note the striking contrast between the monoblocs’ solid attributes and the weak character of the very people occupying them. I wish they know what I’m thinking. I would love to tell them how stupid they are to take the exams when they’re not even ready yet. You take your chances, you deal with the consequences. For chrissake, don’t be such whining pussies!

Incredulous is the way I see it when I overhear snippets of a conversation between a mom and a daughter on another corner. Here is how it goes (translated from vernacular):

Daughter: I think I kind of shaded the portions that need not be shaded. I mean…

Mom: What?! Are you sure?

D: Well, I can’t decide which letter is correct so I kept changing answers and in the process, there we’re a lot of smudges on my paper. So…

M: So, the computer might have…

Dumb: So, I guess the computer checker didn’t really recognize which is which because it was confused which among them is my answer…

Moron: So, that means you could have passed the exams then?

Dumb: I guess so.

Moron: So that’s the reason why you’re name’s not on the list.

Dumb: I guess so.

Moron: So we can file for dispute then?

Dumb: I guess so.

Moral of the story: When people can’t find their way out of a mess, they will invent absurd reasons — asking the constellations, observing the star alignments — to put the blame to anyone but them. And yes, no matter how seemingly for-the respectable-IQs-only a course may be, there will always be bad, rotten apples. Oh, and one more thing: moms will always believe their children even if their offsprings happen to be the greatest liar con artists ever born in the universe.

Enough of the absurdities. So there we are, me, myself, and my overly anxious, about-to-freak-out friends, trying desperately to get closer to the gawddamn papers in the gawddamn walls and so far we are unsuccessful. The swirling smell of pugnacious sweat and scent is preventing us from getting near the damn results boards. However, the brazen badass that I am, I shove my idle hands up Eve’s descendants’ nice booties and firm boobies and lo and behold, we finally see the mob clearing and the names appearing. With more than 3,000 names to wade through, we search for the surnames Manggang Piko and Melong Mabilog first and find ourselves stuck on one dimly lit corner.

The names are printed minutely. There are two passers having the same Manggang Piko surname and by estimate, about half-dozen Melong Mabilog last name. I find one Garcia with a first name that we are familiar with but I dare not to be so unmistakably sure. For all I know, there could be a dozen Catherine Garcias in this side of the planet. “Does your middle name sound like scrotum?” I ask Melong Mabilog. Before I could even finish the question, she is already in a state of delusion, shrieking like a mad hyena. I give a gleeful sigh. One down, one to go.

I look at Manggang Piko. I am hoping the good karma extends to him as well. To him who has put so much effort, so much sweat and blood and masturbation juice for the entire six-month review duration. Gawd knows how much he longed for that three-letter title. But sometimes life knows how to disappoint. It is not always fair and yes, it can be bitchy. I glance back and what I see is a pair of sunken eyes with lachrymal glands working double time to release the agony and frustration.

I do not console him though. I do not utter some arse-kissing that-is-okay-I-know-where-you’re-coming-from litany. I do not say I understand because in truth, I have not tried taking the freakin’ exams yet. But soon I will. In the mean time, he needs to breathe. He needs to stay in one corner and have the friggin’ reality sink in. He needs to compose himself no matter how hideous it may be. Because life must inevitably go on. Because life’s a bitch and to live means to be bitchier.

So much about false expectations.

*A day after taking the CPA Board, my friends and I proceeded to check the results in the review center where two of my friends enrolled. The result was bitter-sweet: Melong Mabilog passed while Manggang Piko failed. Next year, I will be subjected to such tormenting ordeal as well. Wish me luck!

Time Turner Number 4: *Lost In Transition

It’s been a while since I’ve touched this friendster thingy again. And within that span of time, a considerable change has enveloped my very existence… A lot has inevitably been altered and I am struggling hard to get the hang of it. Really… The most noticeable developments that I have to get used to are the disappearance of the close people I used to idle the time with, the parting of the dry environs I always knew by heart, and the unwilling abandonment of the bummer lifestyle I have always cherished. Like a bag of dead body “salvaged” by Hannibalistic local cops, I have been hurled into a new territory where everything is dark and creepy.

I should be thankful for having successfully cut the sleazy Johnny Lazy chain off my wrist. I should appreciate the fact that right now, I am already one of the multitude of young urban professionals who march the streets with proud, corporate strides. I should be cheering up and thanking heavens and earth that, unlike my other batchmates who still cling to their parents’ sleeves for dependence, I am now earning my own dough and enjoying the luxury of say…buying one McDo express meal (always with large fries!) with my own money. And yet…I remain cynical.For more than two months now, I have been earning my own  keep by sitting in front of a gray celluloid at an ungodly hour, mumbling about technical diatribes that you didn’t try firsthand to start with, and faking an accent  to avoid being branded as an “Indian” by your customer. It’s a job that keeps you dependent on caffeine and nicotine for survival - the former I sure can attest, but the latter I still can resist.

From the moment you signed your name in the contract, you have to accept and be aware of the things you have to unwillingly compromise - time, friends, gimmicks, family, lifestyle. These are the words that will have to be deleted in your vocabulary. Where before, you have the luxury of unlimitexting friends and fiends for carefree what’s ups and what nots, now all you can do with the ticking clock is make it sufficient for a sleep-eat-work life cycle. And if you can still get away with an eight-hour dozing, then you’re already lucky. ‘Cause anything below that is considered just normal.

My friends complain I have been “dead” for a long time now. They tell me how I could have forgotten them for so short a time. When they actually engage in a “kumustahan” session in the textroom, most of them wonder what happened to me. They say they miss me. They say they want to have a good, quality time with the old folks again…Just like the good, old days. They actually had one during Lent. Minus me, of course. Because while everyone else may have been enjoying the break tanning their skins to death in beaches, I remain incarcerated in my own computer station trying to troubleshoot a no connection issue with an old man who insists I could make his Outlook Express appear in his desktop even if the program is not in his computer. Talk about immaculate conception.

It’s an unusual, difficult work, yes, what with all the precious things you have to compromise and unwilling sacrifices you have to make. But the perks are more than enough to keep your whiners  out  in the dust. I am currently in an account that compensates fairly well. If you make good, they will give what’s due for you. That means a lot of across-the-board incentives and bonuses on top of your basic pay. And besides, with the current rate of unemployment insanely balooning to a nine-month pregnancy proportion, beggars can’t be choosers.

So I remain loyal to my odd job, bearing with all the crap, learning to love it, or at least like it,  even if it’s the farthest job description my course could be attached to (If my memory serves me right, I should be dealing with debits, credits, and kupits!). Pledging allegiance means knowing how to deflate the hot air in your irate customer’s head, how to be a virtuous man to an old-slash-drunk-slash-deaf-slash-physically-impaired customer, and how to keep your cool even if you feel like busting the phone into the hell-cursing Johnny Doe’s head.

I’m beginning to get the entire process into my system. Slowly, I’m getting familiar with it. Surely, I’m getting there…And until I get to that eureka moment, I will continue fighting the battle of boredom and cynicism. I will continue to sleep when everyone is awake, wake up when everyone is about to sleep, and deliver my opening spiel with renewed enthusiasm:
“Thank you for calling Technical Support! My name is Lio. How may I help you today?”

*This post I made after calling my friends stationed momentarily in Manila. They were a few bunch who proceeded to review for six months. I would have to admit that it was envy that inspired me to pour it out. I was envious because they had the chance to follow their one, true dream. Mine was on hold, and willingly done at that, because I know there are far more important things that needed realization than my mere dream to become a CPA (e.g. my sister’s graduation from college. The night after the call, I had two grande’s of Red Horse and some few guitar strummings to keep me company.

If God Had a Name, What Would It Be?

Alanis Morissette (whaddafuck, is the freakin’ spelling correct?) has always been one of the artists in the music stream whose songs I find engaging and thought-provoking. And that is saying something if it’s one coming from a friggin’ introverted lad who has very little music inclination except playing a classic Beethoven or some ramdom Eraserheads cover in his PSP in full blast to lull himself to sleep.

The title of this entry I borrowed from the lyrics of one of her more popular songs and I was reminded of it just this morning because of some nomad-slash-descendant of god who jeezuzchrist scared the hell out of me for barging into our door without any introduction. The man was in his late sixties, I presume (perchance even in his early seventies already) and his emaciated body, his old checkered polo and his pleated pants — an iconic fashion statement of a decrepit decade forgotten — created a familiar image in my mind, that of frail and forgotten folks mistily looking at some abstract canvas in the veranda of some social institutions for the elderly and the destitute .

He looked at me like a poor, tired dachshund with beady eyes and asked the inhabitants of the small two-floor apartment in Carola if we could at least gawd-bless-our-soul spare him a few minutes of our precious time. I stared back without any response and I did not mean to be rude. It’s just that I was about to finish Jessica Zafra’s take on digital versus manual cameras written in Manila’s most read broadsheet (or so it claims) and I didn’t want to be distracted by any gawddamn thingamajeesm much more, hear a long litany of some whaddaheck-are-you-talking-about gospel the content of which I verily know already — yes, I know that I am a sinner (who is not?) and yes, I know that I need to change my wicked ways and yes, it has to be real quick as in screaming A-S-A-P or else I will be forever condemned to live in the abyss of smokin’, scorchin’ flames of hell but who the the freakin’-good-arse saint are you to judge me so go find someone else because I know what I’m doing and I don’t need your help, thank you very much. I was supposed to politely refuse the bland offer but Tina, our apartment matron by silent agreement and Neng’s sister, ushered the old man in.

Don’t get me wrong.

I am not against any prophet blatherskite wandering around to spread the good word of whoever friggin’ gawd they believe in. That is their life and if they decide to dedicate their existence converting atheists or agnostics to be one in their league then so be it. I respect the dedication, the toilful duty, the faithful trudging to the supposedly right path. I am not an atheist nor an agnostic and I believe that Somebody up there is responsible for this whole crappy macrocosm. While scientists believe in the Big Bang theory for the universe’s creation, I still think an Omniscient Being is behind all the burst that started it all or more accurately, that Omniscient Being created the great galactic ball that blew up, thus creating the galaxies and universes and the infinitesimal whatever-is-freakin-out-there that our modern-day Einsteins have not yet discovered.

So, yes, Virginia, I do believe in God. Albeit without a particular name at that. Which brings me to dear grand-pappy preacher who moved the heavens and earth to convert Neneng, the only inhabitant in the apartment who was too kind to lend the old folk her ears, into their league. As I have expected (I have had a lot of eerie encounters of this kind of if-you’re-not-one-of-us-you’ll-be-doomed-the-fuck-I-don’t-freakin-care scare tactics disguised as biblical discussions), the old man whipped out his Bible from his black, laptop-sized bag and began putting a lump in Neneng’s throat by telling how the entire humanity is so just a few inches away from being burned to death and the only way to get out of such hideous abyss is to repent and change for the better, like she even needed the telling (of course she already knows it, she’s a freakin’ PUP freshman for chrissake). In between stutters, he asked the adolescent to read this verse and browse through that passage and I was wondering if he could read or whether he needed a gawddamn cataract operation for his left eye.
And then came the cue to his evangelical propaganda. Dear Mr. Religious Folk asked Neng, based from what she read and understood, what the name of our dearly beloved god is. Neng who is, I believe,  of Christian background uttered Yahweh without batting an eyelash. Dear Mr. Religious Folk smiled, that kind of grimace that told you he thinks you’re lost and you’re doomed to go to hell and it is his responsibility to guide through the right freakin’ path to eternity gawd-bless-your-soul, and subtly claimed in the most non-condescending way possible that it was incorrect. Lo and behold, God’s name according to him, and there should be no other way to call the Guy Up There rather than this monicker, is Jehovah. You either call Him that and reap the glories of eternal life with him and his flock of believers who shall be, he claimed, the only people saved from among the sea of sinners on earth or you receive the wrath of abomination, your soul wandering endlessly in the pits of doom and agony.

Bingo! It was more than enough to have my ears go on flamin’ fire. Whaddafuck! The only reason why I was civil and humane and most reserved to this evangelical wacko is because he was old and gray and stuttering, the kind of people you don’t want to hit or do some blunt barbarism with. By the looks of him – receding hair line, silver hair strands tucked in an exposed scalp layer , rows upon rows of wrinkled skin and crow’s feet under the eyes – he has had his fair share of life’s shit and crappiness. And I don’t want to add more to that. So what should a restrained young man who begs to differ with an old man’s pointless point of view do? I don’t know about you but what I did was to go upstairs, lock myself in the room, and sing with the great reggae revolutionary Bob Marley. 

I am aware that you don’t delve into the topics of religion and politics during beer drinking sessions lest you get mobbed or smashed with the booze bottle. These are the sensitive matters proponents of both sides of the fence have an unending array of defensive expositions, rebutting everything the opponent might counter, guarding the very principle that they believe in tooth and nail. If you don’t want to risk ruining your birthday bash and instantly get a ruckus out of, it is imperative that you and your friends stick with performing an Eraserheads encore with your guitar, shamelessly lambasting cryptic Paraluman while oblivious of a berserk neigbor’s rant that the apartment compound is “not a forest but a building.” I

n the same manner, I only wished the “wandering prophet” of The-Only-People-Who-Shall-Be-Saved should respect our beliefs as well. The idea that he and his religious group shall be the ONLY earthlings worthy to be saved from the sinner tag, much more insisting that the Guy Up There should ONLY be called Jehovah, is in itself preposterous. If this is the case, what do you call the rest of the world’s pious and devout who happen to call  the Omniscient Being Allah or Buddha or Jesus Christ or Indra?

 When you believe in something that does not have any fool-proof, logical explanation, or that seems to defy reason and science, when you value that something and embrace it without looking for any corroboratory evidence or ancillary grounds, that is called faith. When you shove that friggin’ faith to someone else’s face though, you risk your life and limb.

Time Turner Number 3: *The Harry in Me

I lie lazily flat on my back and stare blankly at the inanimate ceiling, waiting for my “creative juices” to sink in. It’s already a week after my liberation from four months (give or take a few days) of academic imprisonment, at last free from pesky homeworks, annoying alarm clocks, and ugly instructors, and I haven’t even started my resolve to extol Rowling’s engaging read. I have promised myself to finish this over-delayed ”glorification” of Harry Potter’s merits once and for all the moment I plunge into the comforts of that much-awaited semestral break. So now I’m trying to shake my skull, spilling the remaining neurons in my brain to begin this essay with a creative punch lead. But after lying flat on my back for minutes, I feel moronic and sort of… hollow.

I give out a sigh and reach for the box of my Harry Potter collection, neatly stuck up along with rows of equally interesting paperbacks and engaging (in a different way) college textbooks. I pull out the Sorcerer’s Stone, the thinnest of the five, and examine its colorful cover. A young, bespectacled with a curiously shaped scar in the forehead is flying in a broomstick, trying to catch a small, golden ball with wings under a backdrop of things magical – a castle full of towering turrets, a feisty three-headed dog, a galloping white unicorn, a flying owl clutching an envelope and an old, long-bearded wizard who seems to be in haste.

I meant to peruse only a few pages but after reading some chapters, I ended up being lured by its enchantment, reading the magical adventure of The Boy Who Lived all over again. As with my previous journeys, I have found myself reliving the magic in Rowling’s fascinating world. Waiting for the Hogwarts Express in Platform 9 ¾ with Harry. Learning magic and spells at Hogwarts under the teaching tutelage of eccentric witches and wizards. Facing He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named who insists to lord over the magical world despite several failed attempts.

There was Harry, always having close encounters with danger but always displaying admirable courage while struggling more burdens than any other Hogwarts student. Hermione, the brightest witch in her class despite her Muggle lineage, helping Harry overcome the obstacles and hindrances that come their way. Ron, Harry’s sidekick, he who bears insecurity over his brothers’ achievements, always giving support to his best mate. There was Hogwarts Big Boss Albus Dumbledore, the bastion of all things good, watching over young Harry as he grows up. And of course, Lord Voldemort, vowing to spread enmity and discord to achieve his ends.

It is interesting to note how Rowling’s characters have come to live a life of their own and how one can’t do anything but love them as they are. Harry is famous in his school but he’s not perfect. He always stammers for an answer in Snape’s threatening interrogatives, he’s capable of jealousy and he breaks rules almost too often. But despite these flaws, readers still admire him for his braveness and for what he is. Hermione may be too concerned with her academics, an “insufferable know-it-all” according to Snape, but she still manages to have time for her two friends, Harry and Ron. For his part, Ron can be friendly and loyal but he has the tendency to be insecure sometimes. They’re not all perfect but still, it is because of them that I have significantly fancied the books.

She may not have the adorned and majestic prose of Tolkien or the quirky and charming narrative of Dahl, but the fact that she has provided real pleasure and introduced a high quality of entertainment to an enormous number of readers – both young and old – makes Rowling a brilliant writer indeed. This appeal she manages to pull off through her interesting characters and fascinating, never-before-seen things and places.

The books ingeniously penned by J.K. Rowling are like life, but definitely better. She mixes life’s usual struggles with her own touch of magic and fantasy. Harry catches the Snitch almost effortlessly, talks to snakes, breathes underwater like other schools of fish, but the inescapable sadness he feels whenever he remembers his dead parents makes him so vulnerable. Ron’s family is all wizards and witches but they cannot escape poverty in just a flick of a wand and make money out of thin air. Hermione can be always at the top pf the class but the fact that her parents are Muggles makes her tormented by Draco’s sharp tongue as he mercilessly calls her a “mudblood.”

Somebody wise once said that childhood and maturity are all endless and all one. You don’t know where the former begins and the latter ends. At 19, I have to admit that I have to grow up sooner or later, whether I like it or don’t. It is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean I have to leave Harry behind. For something that has unconsciously taught me a lot of things, doing this would be like making me French kiss Mad-Eye Moody’s disgusting large, round, electric blue eye. Lessons and values about friendship, family, and life; about fear, courage, death and bereavement. Harry Potter has taught me to be strong, to just go for it and stand up to my fears.

I figured out that there would certainly come a time when giving up and letting things be would seem the best choice to do but if you have that one purpose in life and you are determined to achieve it, then you’d trash that feeling off, stand up again, go back to the battle field and fight like hell. Everybody of us can do just that. Like Harry Potter, I think I have a bit of that flaming courage within me, an air of stubbornness and a refusal to yield without a fight. As I grow wiser each day, as I seriously think about my own future, as I continue to find my true identity, the things I have learned from Harry will always be with me.

Once in a while, I slip into that magical world where I could be just me, built on my own rules and constraints. I drift in to the fascinating realm of Harry Potter, learning new spells at Hogwarts, strolling around Hogsmeade, wandering leisurely at the diagonally laid Diagon Alley. I couldn’t help it. It’s times like this when I know my dreams become reality. Oh well, no use thinking about it right now. I have to beat the deadline. I rub my face, raise my arms vigorously and let out a satisfying yawn. Then I start this essay with a line like… I lie lazily flat on my back and stare blankly at the inanimate ceiling.

*Credit goes to an old friend, Casey, Sylvia Plath reincarnate, for a submitted article that inspired me to write this book review. I intentionally wrote this as an entry for a major broadsheet’s nationwide favorite-book contest when I was in college. Eventually, though, I submitted something else after concluding that this book review was too juvenile to catch the editors’ attention. Unexpectedly, my review on the “Angela’s Ashes” paperback was picked as a weekly winner. Got 5000 grand GC for winning. The winning book review I will publish at some later Time Turner.

To My Future CPA Friends and *Pate’s

I bid you good luck for tomorrow’s test.

For six months, you have prepared for this bring-it-on-give-it-to-me-now-or-give-me-death, freakin’ examination and now the possible fruit of your labor is almost within your sweaty grasp. You might be feeling mixed emotions today. Excited? A bit I guess. More like anxious perchance?  Hopefully not frightened to death.

For six months, you have toiled and sacrificed and endured seemingly insurmountable obstacles to get to where you are right now. You isolated yourself from the world, giving up your social life, shutting yourself from life’s frenzies and distractions, sacrificing being far away from your loves ones. You took it upon yourselves to live a friggin’, oh-so-boring lives limiting your communication to the outside world with texting yor folks for allowances, challenging the hermit’s lifestyle or a monk’s monastery-enclosed existence. And for that you earn my admiration.
Time flies so fast that I never really thought this would come to an end, that our moments together, although short-lived, would finally take its final chapter. It seemed only yesterday when you, rural young cubs armed with hope and young idealism and optimistic philosophies, went on board the two-floor, little apartment in Carola St., Espana to live a life for six months without any television or constant nagging from overly-protective parents or wistful yawns brought about by waking up with the soothing breeze from the province during early mornings. I’m sure you sorely missed those as much as I have longed for my idyllic Baguio life back then.

When Tina introduced me to you, you only knew me as your former snob JPIA president, an icon of academic authority back then who looked at matters with seriousness. I have to admit that I knew littler than you knew about me. Tina said you were former JPIA members, sophomores at the time we were already a year from leaving the portals of our Alma Mater. We may have crossed paths before, somehow, somewhere in the short 4th Floor AS Bldg, and I regret that we didn’t have the chance to talk back then. As it is now, I regret that I only know little about you in spite of the six-month time that we shared a common abode. Nonetheless, whatever it is that we shared in our little dwelling, I will surely treasure with utmost respect. I hope you have learned at least a thing or two about living a wicked lifefrom my SSDD-driven, drunken bastardly outlook in life.

It takes painstaking guts to momentarily part ways with your mom and dad, your siblings, your friends from the province, leaving everyone whom your life depended on, to to take this unsure, precarious journey to the big city. It takes more courage though to focus on this gargantuan task ahead of you because you know that, whatever happens, people around will inevitably look at you the way you dealt with the exam. Whether you like it or not, some asshole  out there will dismiss you as a stupid proletariat or a moronic money lootbag, tagging you as a failure because you failed to get at least 70% average in the eight-subject test syllabus of arguably, the most difficult Board examinations ever created in this side of the Pacific (Yes, Virginia, the overly-celebrated Bar exams and even the tedious, conservative Medicine Board are no much to ours, the reasons too broad to discuss in this entry. Maybe some other time, I will dissect the cases in point why I boldly proclaim our Board is the most difficult, the most “nosebleeding” of all!)

But I say fuck their bigotry and narrow-mindedness. I have told you this before and I will tell you once again - What happens after that four-day, two-week exams will matter little to defining who you are as a person. Society should never dictate what you should become. Whatever happened to individuality? It is not about results but rather, it’s about how you are remembered. Not about passing but about personality. Not about competence but character. It is just a test that is supposed to measure how well you have mastered THE course, how equipped you are to practice what we’ve learned in college, how worthy you are to be ordained with that three-letter title. Bear in mind that there is nothing different with this test than what you’ve taken in college, only this one’s big in scope - call it the test of all of tests.

You may have had shortcomings during the almost 24 weeks that you stayed with us, playing lackadaisical bastards like me every once in a while, whiling away at the nearest mall each time boredom lurks to kill you at the boarding house, sleeping like hags with mouths open and review notes eagle-spread across your faces whenever you find your review material a big piece of incomprehensible gibberish shit, but that does not mean you have slim chances of passing the exams.

In fact you do have good chances. I have noticed you burning the midnight oil until the lamp runs out dry, putting matchsticks to your reluctant eyelids just so you cover the day’s lecture. I have seen you restraining yourselves to text your beau’s or your friends or your loved ones because you thought you were trailing far behind in Auditing Theory or Business Law and Taxation and even just seconds exercising your thumb would cause you uncompromising harm. I have witnessed how you became cryptic, nocturnal banshees who’d rather be caught sleeping with drooling mouths and wet handouts in the sofa rather than be caught snoring comfortably like an ogre in your beds. Such sheer dedication, such enormous effort.

So don’t put yourself into too much thinking. Heck, you are already freakin’ preoccupied without such expectations to bother you anyway. I hope you remember what your kuya told you when he was drunk as an old fool across the street, shooting English invectives in random one time - “Whether you pass or flunk, you are still a human being. It does not make you any better or any worse.” Just think about this: people who pass it are just gawddamn lucky enough since most of the stuff they tried to put in their skulls got picked out of the thousands and thousands of probable questions to be formulated. Same as people who don’t have Lady Luck beside them for of all the things they had to fill in their heads, only just a few apparently were chosen.

So there. Just because you hurdled THE test does not mean you’re already superior than the other folks. Of course you can have some bragging rights if you aced it. Whadddafuck, you did get passed such hideous, seemingly insurmountable piece of nerve-wracking, skull-breaking test. But not too much braggadoccio I tell you. Because come to think of it, all of the examinees prepared for this. You prepared for this for 180 friggin’ days. It’s just that some are luckier than the others, the things they’ve reviewed got picked out of the gazillion possible questions to compose the exam syllabus. Being lucky (or being blessed by God or having good karma or riding the positive fate, whatever you call it) - sometimes,  this makes the all the difference. Sometimes, it becomes the tipping point.

Hence, I quip again: I bid you good luck for tomorrow’s test. Go kick some ass!

Nota Bene: Five of my pate’s are going to have one of the most difficult times of their lives today, taking the first of the four-day, two-week examinations in their quest to become Certified Public Accountants. Two friends in my barkada will be taking it as well. To Aiza, Jo Ann, Veron, Ryan, Menard, Papa Resty, and Baby Cat, three cheers to your future debit and kupit careers!

*Pate - shortened term for Kapatid, vernacular of sibling 

Time Turner Number 2: *Mercy, Mother, Mercy

My mom is about to enter the asylum.

She is beyond my comprehension and I don’t think I can stand her going ballistic every now and then. I am already bloody insane and if she, herself, hops aboard the neurotic crazy label, then I’m certain things won’t be going to be nice and easy in our own little dwellings. Magnetic fields of the same signs repel each other and two negatives–me and my mom–dont actually arrive at a positive result, thereby inadvertently defying the laws of physics.

I have an idea why she acts like Miriam D nowadays. And the reason also begins with M. M as in Money… Yes, Virginia, money is driving her into this state. Or more appropriately, the lack of it. My mom has suffered the tremendous low and it’s making her abnormal. She had been jobless since God knows when, hopped from one pathetic unstable job to another, started a sari-sari store and forced to close it just the same because the sales just inevitably leaked out of the kaput stall like a running water, even wore Mary Magdalene’s robe and loaned some doe to almost any single being she knew out in the street.

Now, she is twiddling her fingers in the hope that the annoying mannerism will bring her a switched-on lightbulb in her head. As of this moment, she is a nomadic agent of some goddamn loan company, tirelessly roaming the streets to look for clients who want to borrow money, promising heaven and earth, sweettalking anyone who would care to listen about her current preoccupation. Sometimes, a number would listen, many of them actually interested, but among the dozens she has submitted in the head office for credit investigation, only one or two would get the loan approval.

So what do you expect from this kind of job where your take-home pay depends upon the number of freakin’ persons you submit, who should have a business, a house and lot, a car, a tricycle, or any other collateral in order to get the OK signal? If you’re a middle-aged woman who happens to be a single parent with two bright (ahem!) kids in college, the elder one about to graduate and the other entering her upperclassman year, you can readily put two and two together and take the conclusion that the equivalent of your almost-night-and-day sales talking out there isn’t enough to cover the family pie chart of expenses. And to think that she’s a Business Ad graduate from one of the more respectable universities in Manila.

She’s had jobs, decent ones, before this sickening dilemma and when I remember those times, they never fail to put a smile in my face. Those were the days, the happier times when every 15th and 30th day of the month, my mom and Sean and me would go to the city, dine at a fastfood restaurant, and just have some guilt-free fun in the mall the whole afternoon. When I reminisce the time when mom was working a 9-to-5 job, wearing corporate clothes, walking in stilletoes, and dabbing her face with some respectable make up, I can’t help but sigh and say, gawd, I miss those times.

My mother is the living testament of the old story about the boy who lost a horse because he wanted something better. (If you don’t know what the helluva story am I talking about, just try to get the drift.) In my mom’s case, the horse was her nice-paying bank job here and the something better part is the dinar currency she can get from a land beyond this border. After ten years or so, she went home heralded as one of the new heroes of this country but in shortage of all the moolah she was supposed to earn outside.

Oh, yes, that was how all this little money mayhem started and I really thought that the shortest way to fatten your emaciating back-pocket is to raid the Western lands with your distinct Filipino labor. (That doesn’t deter me, however, from going to Rowling’s situs in the near future…haha…Pounds, baby, pounds…)

So nowadays, I’m the canine to my mother’s feline existence. We shoot each other with invectives almost every single day, some of them as potent as sending the most wicked teacher-villain in my school to slopping state. She starts her verbal rage about how bloody bastard I am in speaking my thoughts infront of her, about how all these parental retaliation will boomerang one day when I’m old and gray and already a doting parent to my own son, and I don’t give a damn (because I’m certain that when I have my own family, I will give them all they need..nay, even their insatiable wants). I still answer back even if one of the Ten Commandments is “Honor thy father and thy mother.” I still speak up my mind because I think it’s better for her to hear what I would like to say to make some sense out of her, about how she seems to be so incompetent in this folk tag, about the way she seems to bungle on some of the most important things we’re all expecting her to accomplish.

My mother is a good mother, and I have nary an argument in that, but what I find ludicrous is how sloppy she deals with some tough things that require clear-cut decisions. Perhaps because my mother is only learned on the maternal things-to-do list. Maybe because at the time my half-genes donor abandoned us, she wasn’t prepared, even trained, to act like a tough mama. Tough as in earning a living for the whole three mouths, religiously acing through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, rearing the children like Marcos in his Martial Law era, or making a hard-headed son behave like a marshmallow.

I don’t know if I have to be hateful about the way she handles all the family matters. I know I shouldn’t. And I know, deep down inside, I can’t. Because she’s my mom, she’s the reason why I’m here existing, slowly beginning to be realistic and trashing-slash-shunning the youth idealism outright, currently breathing foul language and foul thoughts to this endearing (!) world. I have never greeted her Happy Birthday (she’s blowing another candle when October falls her last leaf) or Happy Mother’s Day (I know this one’s in May) and while I’m in this rotting cynical mantra, I know that I won’t ever. I have never kissed her or hugged her (ugh!) or even said Barney’s magic words to her. I don’t recall doing all of these mushy acts to her and I think depriving her of these things is not synonymous to hatred. (Before labeling me as the ultimate “prodigal son,” allow me to utter my saving grace that I take the “mano” before leaving and upon arriving home.)

I know that I will forever be grateful to my mother. Even if she gives me an allowance that is so Third-world you couldn’t even afford to have the luxury of a two-day Unlimited texting. Even if she makes a fool out of you because she doesn’t say she’s given you the day’s allowance from your own pocket, cautiously getting your hard-earned bucks while you’re still asleep. Even if I recall her reducing to bits and ashes my first Jollibee wristwatch because Sean wanted it and I don’t want to give it. Even if she almost always leaves us stuck in our tuition fee problems, of which my sister has always been the piteous victim. Even if Sean and I can remember her shortcomings more often than her plus parent points. Even if I know she’ll end up at the bottom pit if there’s a Mrs. Single Parent contest. Even if she failed miserably, in our standards, rearing her children. Even if she’s so trying hard to be a perfect mother. For she is my mom and at the end of the day, the thing that will most leave an indelible mark in my short-term-memory-loss-suffering skull is her triumph of overcoming the adversities, the obstacles in becoming the best person that she could be so that she can perform her duties to both me and Sean.

My mother’s name is Mercy.

*One of my numerous emo posts. I remember writing this when I was really fed up with my mom’s way of dealing  with our pathetic lives.  I thought it was the last single straw.  Thought of running away, leaving everything behind, moving to some faraway, gawddamn place I’ve never been to like Bataan or Siquijor and start living a new life incognito. It never happened. Turned out I had a lot of “last single straws” and a greater love for her and my sister.

Time Turner Number 1: *Gimme a Break

Nota Bene: It is difficult to part ways with my old blog entries and so, in the tradition of grand narcissistic SSDD fashion, I am reposting some of them under the title “Time Turner” (gawd, I swear I can’t still get the HP freak  off me!). I’ve carefully chosen those that mattered, those that made impact during my pre-yuppie, college mold, and ultimately directed me to the life path that I am trudging on as of the moment. Read on.

Today is Wednesday and I’m nine days off the curse of the 20-year-old mold.

Tomorrow my sister, who has been harassing my mom for some gawddamn money for an engineering project through her (my mother) wretched blue-peeling Trium model, will be having her birthday and I know she feels pathetic and morose about having to celebrate a birthday without even some pennies to afford a decent birthday candle. Gawd knows how bloody tormenting that is for a person to be coming off her last birthday with a 1-digit age.

She’ll be turning twenty tomorrow and I know she’ll be looking at it like another day has gone, barred of any special meaning whatsoever. If I have the money, which even a blind would very well discern I haven’t, I will give her the bucks she deserves and let her spend it the way she likes it spending - with a couple of friends going to the big screen, with her curled up dorm-mates having a nice tea party inside their hibernating Catholic abode, or even with that Chinese-descending guy who, I’m told, is patiently giving my sister a taste of Shakespearean flittings of romance. If…If…If…

I’m sitting here infront of a rotting PC whose keys are as stubborn as age-old blocks of ice in the freezer, listening to a blast of Parokya’s poignant melody, killing the hours innovating my friendster profile like it would make any slightest difference in the world, pouring my idiosyncratic thoughts into this bloody blog, skiving off my class and lying to my mom that I went to school although, truth be told, I only had a short walk in the town proper to look for a decent computer shop to while away.

I escape from reality, run away from its sickening entrails of cruelty and bitchiness, blood and all, and ponder on what I would do next the moment I resign from being an academic bummer dependent on my about-to-be-crazy mother’s dole outs like a blood-voracious leech.

Gawd, just for a short length of time, just for two hours, I want to be alone and philosophical, I want everyone - friends, kins, foes, and beggars - to leave me alone. I want not a single friggin’ thought of problems bothering my already deteriorating gray matter. I just don’t want anyone, not a single soul, sticking some ugly devil’s fork up my arse for a moment.

So I think and think and think, like I’m a freakin’ descendant of Plato or some other Greek idlers (wait a sec, was Plato a Greek?…whatever!). I think about my future, what I’m going to do after I haul my arse up that hell-of-a-school, what’s going to happen to mom and Sean the moment they give me that scrolled paper.

Allow me to make a digression… Why does everyone have to toil for that, anyway? A man shouldn’t be judged according to how many of that fuckin’ paper he has. If you’ve got brains and you know you’ve got the talent, in spite of being deprived of proper schooling, then who are they to tell you you’re not worthy of any decent 9-to-5 jobs out there? Who are they to tell you they’re smarter just because they have that wretched piece of rolled paper tucked in their sleeves and you don’t? Puh-leaze! I hate society’s norms but I can’t do anything to defy it… Because I’m poor and helpless and jobless and I don’t have any gold to turn the ugly tide…

So I think I’m going to work after graduation. Be a slave of the burgeoning call center industry and fatten away my arse telling dumb people what to do with this and that. God I can’t believe ignoramuses abound in numbers…But it’s good. In some way. Because I get to keep a nice-paying job (a thousand bucks a day for being superior and for telling people how utterly idiot they are? haha…) out of it. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with the course Ive taken but hey, to each his own, mind your own business. I’m not pushing you to jump off some politician’s name-extolled bridge so don’t tell me what to do and what not to.

My friends say I should first try to review for the CPA Board Exam, what with all the impressive goodies stuffed in my head. That I’ll be wasting this God-given adroitness if I get stagnant keeping my arse rod-hot in a swivel chair with a fuckin’-shit-sonuvabitch Western accent.

Sometimes, I try to think about that myself. Gawd, I studied Accountancy because I wanted to be an accountant, not an overpaid, bored blatherskite. When I think about how I could apply all the stuffs I learned in school, when I think about myself having to balance some accounts, having to audit San Miguel Corp or maybe Ayala’s conglomerate, I feel that it should be the path that I should be rightfully coursing through. But all the financial worries of my mom bring me back to my senses. (All because of her “butterflying” over a bunch of nice-paying jobs…But that’s another story. And I might as well write about that at some other time.)

I appreciate the concern of my friends and some other people advising me the same thing but it’s hard to deal with the matter when you’re an immature, lackadaisical guy who has to bring food on the table and worry over your sister’s education and your mom’s welfare all because you’re good-for-nothing father (God bless his soul!) left you and your mother and sister to cohabit with some other scarlet woman! (Nonetheless, the grudge is under the bridge now, I’ve learned to forgive and forget and if I ever have the chance to meet him again, I’ll act like a son whose longing for a father could very well be augmented by a hefty heir fortune…haha…Just kiddin’).

So I act like a big man, mature and responsible in every way, and say, Thank you for the empty words but unless you can give me 30,000 grand every month to pay off my mom’s debt and take care of my sister’s schooling, then God bless your soul, no hard feelings, no offense meant, but Im sticking to being a brown-skinned talking machine with an American twang. Until a person could give me a valid reason that may well defy logic and reason, I don’t have no choice but to be a slave of some Occidental service-providing company. And if that person is still stubborn to insist on what he thinks, I’m going to shove the devil’s fork up his arse and give him my own piece of logic: starving proletariats with the three-letter title after more than half-a-year or untitled yuppie with a sister secured of her schooling and a mother looking half her age because she’s finally debt-free?

Make me!

*Penned this a few months before I finally graduated from college. While majority of my classmates were contemplating about their post-college lives as Board reviewees, I was more concerned over earning big bucks after leaving college. All of my friends and professors advised me to review and to take the Board and thought that I had a good chance of excelling the test. I would have told them I’d really love to but my sister’s education was far more important than my review. So I chose to be a call center whore. Tough luck.

Because Manila Has The Moolah

In Espana, people in knee-deep water feel the cliche “When it rains, it pours” deeply enough.

Situated in one of the population-condensed streets of this arterial Manila road for temporary abode, I’ve always bore the brunt of waking up at least three hours ahead of my normal work schedule so as not to get caught in the mayhem traffic. After all, this is Manila and if one is to arrive right on the dot at the busy district of Makati, he must plan ahead of time and beat the last-minute rush. As predictable and boring as watching today’s “kilig”-induced movies churned out in cinemas this may sound, you have no choice but to reluctantly do it. Pretty much the same as dutifully accompanying your girlfriend to watch a cheesy romantic flick with the same, sickening recycled movie plot.To think about the rush hour is in itself a pain in the arse but what do you do under worst-case scenarios, when all of a sudden the Guy Up There fancies playing bowling and decides to pour down Olympus-sized buckets of water to a harried metropolis? Simple: you try to grin and bear with such an unfortunate event, hoping against hope that tomorrow dear beloved Espana is a bottomless pit no more.

The overpass at night, rumored to be a favorite hibernation of thugs and pugs and anyone with souls decaying in our place, has been an imperative route to get the perfect spot in hailing a Buendia FX during these times when cocooning in the thick blanket till you snooze is preferable than going outside like say, taking a walk in the park. I took the steps with nary the slightest trace of fear or hesitation, crossed the path whose stench befouls any signatured cologne one might be wearing, and trudged the lane going to a spot where bacteria-mooched waters don’t creep. The cars and jeeps and motorcycles passing, all in their honking glory, are like mad beasts in a jungle that have been disturbed by an unlikely phenomenon. It is a Sunday and the pious who have just gone to mass are mocked to test their reinvigorated faith by extending their patience and religious morales at vehicles ditching mud and dirt and dark waters to their immaculate Sunday dresses. The twenty-somethings, trying to push the weekend pass further, find themselves clinging to their significant others’ waists like malnourished tarsiers as they wait ’till kingdom come for the flood to run out dry. Here and there, a jeepney driver gets pissed off by the queue of unmoving engines and in a king-of-the-road braggadoccio, articulates a perfect 10 cuss in vernacular afterwhich honks his horn like it would make any difference in the world.

As I would like to point out, floods in Espana bring out the best and worst in its inhabitants (more so with the latter) and several cuss words, forehead creases, and 10 minutes later, I finally manage to squeeze in my behind (along with three other passengers) in a seat that could only accommodate three. The seating arrangement reminded me of the can of mackerel I had for lunch and while Dante might have closely encapsulated the essence of being in hell in his classic prose, I believe he might have had a different perspective, far worse than what he had already written, had he become a Filipino and experienced first-hand what it is to live in a city where perennial flood and angry fists and foul pollution interact like what my Grade 3 teacher talked about in an ecosystem cycle.

In the middle of my immature moans and ramblings and how I wished, oh Gawd, to be back in cool and comfy Baguio, just being there and savoring the crisp mountain air and watching the hanging fogs crown the mountainous terrains, the woman to my left asked the mumbling driver to stop right before the famed Quiapo church and have her drop off a spot where dirty, murky water do not abound (”Ma, dun po sa walang baha!”). This woman of 30 had her wish, I alighted to give way, and in her place, a lady who is, I surmise, in her late twenties stepped in the car. The four passengers became prisoners of the mackerel can again but I will not tell you that I’m dismayed. Quite the opposite, in fact, for to my right now sits a woman of utter sophistication whose perfume reminded me of the scent of morning dew in Baguio. She looked like Vicky Belo to me, much younger, and her eye lashes, oh how her eye lashes curled like a dozen vintas  sailing in the turbulent seas.

As much as I would like to veer away from her for fear of arousing that sleeping bestial part in me, her scent all the more makes me succumb like a weak prey. Such is the power of this bewitching woman that what I could only do is to heave sighs and hallucinate over lucid FHM moments, a Samson whose strength has been cut by Delilah’s beguilement. She rummaged over her flesh-colored hand bag, presumably of LV signature, and groped for her fliptop Motorola phone. And while I know it is impolite to glance over someone else’s text message, her long candle-like fingers with nails coated in shy pink nail polish lured me to doing otherwise. Over the luminous glow emitting from her phone’s LCD screen, I glanced at the short text about her dropping off MOA and congratulating her boyfriend about the basketball win and how his team was a shave off from winning it from UST and reminding him not to over-party with his teammates. It was curious how she called him “Bhiew”, making me contemplate whether the term of endearment was a rude localization of “Beau” or a sly alternation of the more popular “Bhie.”

To find a distraction, I reluctantly peered through the window and found a pack of five shirtless kids having the time of their life in the knee-deep flood without any slight trace of reservation, swimming like Michael Phelps racing through his historic eight-medal haul. There they were wading in the sea of used plastic cups, of water-soaked poopoo diapers, of drowning headless cockroaches, of sickeningly horrible who-knows-what, as if the rain quenched their thirst for that much-awaited and well-deserved siesta. It is a sharp contrast to how we in the mackerel can felt at that very moment. For the overjoyed kids in toothless grins, the torrential rain is a predilection that they would never have traded to anything else, except perhaps if you offered them some unfinished cheeseburger from a nearby fastfood resto. For the FX people, the sudden shower is an unwelcomed occurrence that meant being stuck in traffic and being late for work or maybe not meeting a commitment on time. Outside, the rain outpour is met with giggles and gleeful shouts jumps of joy. Inside the FX, much chagrin, and pouting, failed expectations and future petty excuses abound.  Such a sharp contrast to perfectly define the difference between kids and adults.

Last June, I decided to trade Baguio’s cool comfort to Manila’s idiosyncrasies. A lot would have pleaded to take my place and so much more would have thought I’m crazy for the geographical change but I have no choice. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love Baguio, it was perfect, living there was surreal except when you put finance in the picture. Back up there, the salary that I get for speaking the American twang in order to assist someone on the other side of the globe connect to the Internet is barely enough to support the expenses of a family of three - me, my sister, and my mom. Manila, on the other hand, promises a well-compensating job with the widest opportunites for career advancement. It was actually a 50-50 dilemma until my sister tipped the gridlock. She graduated last May and confided that she wanted to review in Manila, meaning burgeoning expenses to be allocated for her apartment rent, food, tuition fee for the review school, and her monthly allowance,  meaning the need to get a better-paying job for me. The doting HF (read: Head of the Family) that I was, I said sure right there and then and said goodbye to the idyllic life in Baguio. Thus begins the saga of the Baguio lad who moved in Manila to get a better-paying job and in the process, had to endure being jammed in traffic and wading in knee-deep water to get to work during the slightest sign of rain.

The Vampire Strikes Back!

I have the writer’s itch yet again.

After over a year of abandoning this ambitious pursuit, I’m at it one more time. Writing is a forgotten craft that I’ve unconsciously put back in the backseat to pave the way to my idea of a young, urban professional’s unique eutopia (or maybe in the tradition of the SSDD mantra, a yuppie’s sleazy nighhtmare). While I never had the slightest intention to develop amnesia over this scribe’s skill, working in a graveyard-shift job that requires you to fake your accent and be extra-patient when dealing with offshore Ed, Edd and Eddy customers will mercilessly let you do just that. At first, I thought if only I had the resolve to write at least a few strings of sentences even only during my day off, then it would allow me to continue honing this love for writing. I said if this is really something that I love to do, then I won’t forget it that easily.

Truth is, I did not. Over the first few months that I became a slave of the corporate yuppie tag, I’ve been able to religiously chronicle a series of unfortunate (and rarely sometimes, fortunate) events that made a mark in my mind even during  more common bouts of short term memory loss. I was doing quite well with my resolve until slowly, like a candle wick being extinguished inch by little inch, entries in the slim Blue Feather notebook that were originally two pages long were reduced to measly half-page lazy diatribes. And inevitably, it came to a point where the lousy composiutions became mere one-liner, dependent clauses like “Stressed out. Had too many calls. Zzzzzzz…” How utterly pathetic.

So my predilection for adjectives and vivid verbs and words that pictured a thousand images went into an unforeseen hiatus, eventually dying a natural death while I continued to talk my way over overseas moolah in Baguio’s largest international call center company. What is odd and curious though is how I got hooked up into this kind of written ramblings in the first place when in fact, I am supposed to deal with monetary numbers, which I surmise I would never have the chance to  lie down on in reality. Allow me to state a digression: I took a course in college that dealt with making sure companies don’t cheat over their taxes, examining financial records and ensuring that the numbers are accurate right up to the last centavo, and ascertaining that their figures are good to go to merit a qualified opinion. Whoever said that people good in Math are ignoramuses in English and folks commanding the written word with ease are stupid in the figures calisthenics is ought to be rebutted. (But that is another story, which merits another blog entry.)

Several attempted but failed blog sites later, however, I find myself writing my very first entry for this new (and hopefully, last) blog site yet again. Here I am  at the living room of some friends’ apartment scribbling words upon words like there’s no tomorrow, whose print I would never know if any Internet passerby looking for some arousing “hoinky toinky” discreetly at one Trojan-packed R18 site (in spite of a “Strictly No Porn Browsing” sign conspicuously dangling on the cafe’s wall) would stumble upon. While I continue to write and finish these strings of sentences with a building irritation over a runny Reindeer nose leaking with a steady supply of sticky, virus-filled mucus, an itchy throat that is suffering from dry cough and that is going to be scratched with a blunt blade any time now, and a pair of watery, puffy eyes that has endured 18 hours of sleeplessness and outlasted crazy “fruit friends” filling their heads with possible CPA Board Exam questions ’till the wee hours of dawn, I have come to a resolution to post at least two chronicles every week in order to keep this passion for the pen anything but short-lived. I kept the minimum to two since the only time I could write  a sensible, unhasty composition would be during my two-day off from work. 

I am aware that most writers in the blogosphere do have the tendency to write about their freakin’, selfish I-talk, even jotting down anything trite and banal like what they friggin’ ate for breakfast, or how they were amused and mesmerized by their cute, wtf-I-don’t-freakin-care PE instructor’s pre-workout stretching,  or how they exchanged stupid pleasantries with their gawddamn beaus (”Bhie, eat knb?”…bleeech!) who probably are a few strings away from snapping and calling it quits due to getting used to familiar relationship routines. These are people who think they’re God’s gift to the blogosphere but in truth only deserve to be annihilated for polluting the Internet with shallow I am the fuckin’ apple of the fuckin’ universe’s eyes shindigs. Some bunch of self-conceited, narcissistic megalomaniacs who think their prose products are crystal reincarnates of some archaic classics. And although I admit I will be caught jumping into this benign blog entries bandwagon every once in a while, I will try my very best to slash my wrists before I nurture the abhorring act to remind myself that people are not interested with my mundane, boring life. If I find myself guilty of selfishly doing a jeezuz-christ-what-the-gawddamn-bullshit-are-you-taking-about monologue, I will try my very best to at least make it as most interesting and as most engaging as possible. (Blogs, after all, are a reflection of our freakin’ narcissistic extension to extol and gratify our gawddamn boring lives.)

In hindsight, I am wishing that this blog shall become my shock absorber of the things that make my mundane life categorically engaging. It will hopefully be a notepad of the absurdities and idiosyncrasies inherent in my ego-boosting personality, a chronicle of the day’s humdrum revelations that will eventually go into my gray matter’s recycle bin by the time I get ready to hibernate at night. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this (pardon my lack of a better word) “diarying” won’t be as short-lived as this evening’s overhyped news coverage of what’s hogging the limelights in the current events. On a lighter note, I’d like to think that there are many fringe benefits I may derive from sitting in front of this lifeless shell of circuits and gigabytes twice a week to make a bloody “journal entry” (whoever said that Accounting and blogging can never be mutually exclusive?). These are as follows:

1. A perfect piece of exercise for my numbing, underused, long fingers

2. A chance to get even with the wicked ways of the world by polluting it with my randomly idiotic ideas

3. An opportunity to get even with the bitchy vent outs of ugly everyday real-life villains who make life worse than what it already is

5. A means to become one step closer to my devious plan of world domination

 And so at nearly less than a quarter before four, with nobody to keep me company but Aaron Eckhart’s silhouette and his “I believe in Harvey Dent” badge printed in the black KFC tumbler, a pile of crumpled mucus-filled tissue dried out by the whirring ceiling fan’s humid blast, and dminute, industrious ants marching up to rob the bowl of its carrots and cubed potatoes and sliced meat in blood-red sauce contect, I call this day a night and I begin the saga of a gifted Baguio lad-turned-Manila boy and his belief in the SSDD mantra.