Menthol-Guy

By meeting the prescribed signs and symptoms you are requested to go straight to a sari-sari store, buy a liter of Gran Matador (the usual brandy of college students) and drink until you lapse into an alcoholic stupor.

1) You deviate from your usual diversions like reading books and watching movies.

- Yes, for the last movie I have watched was three weeks ago: Lord of the Rings (it’s the one with Frodo, Sam and SmeagLOL climbing on a hidden staircase on a cliff and the fallen elven bread and some huge fat arachnid envenoming Frodo) and I admittedly think it was geekishly interesting and that I should and would read it as soon as vacation starts this 16th of October.

- Yes, for I have shelved the books I’ve been reading last month (which was Harp by John Gregory Dunne and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami).

- Also, I have been listening to Incubus (including Warning, a song sent by Juice through Yahoo! Messenger a year ago), Maroon 5 and my past inclinations. I haven’t downloaded anything that’s chart-topper new.

2) You tend to forget debuts and birthdays.

- I skipped someone’s debut by a last-minute refusal due to my organization-related duties. Worse, I forgot to tell someone to come over our house get my gift and give it to her as a way of saying thanks for the invite. I’m probably the biggest disappointment in the debut, though I’m not in a position to assume that I’m one of the VIPs there.

3) You rarely think of your girlfriend / ex-girlfriend.

- No bitterness in my side, I’m quite sure we have been seeing a lot during classes but that’s just it.

4) You won something in an academic contest.

- I recently won a trophy, my first trophy in my life (medals aside), on a Macroeconomics (Econ101) quiz contest. I ranked second out of the twenty-eight geeks who deliberately joined the contest to show off their intellectual assets and liabilities.

5) You play DoTA less frequently.

- This symptom is not true for all people. Ironically, the tons of papers to accomplish and the tons of things to review, the more chance that we would play DoTA (so there’s this positive relationship between academics and DoTA, seriously).

6) You drink coffee more often.

- NO WAY. This semester I’ve only drank a single warm cup of coffee! As of the moment (since I am very much aware that I would turn into a full-fledged coffee drinker like Dad), caffeine’s not in my system. And I don’t have a gas range or at least a thermos to boil water for coffee. That’s why last Monday night I bitterly spoon-fed myself those three-in-one packets college students buy. Yes, without water. The bitterness stayed in my mouth the entire night, but I still slept.

7) You’re too busy to even jot notes and reminders on your planner.

- I’m actually thinking of burning my planner on some bonfire since it has proved itself obsolete. Why would I waste my precious time organizing everything on its pages when I could do the planning mentally?

8) Lastly, you blog less often.

- Back then I fear that one day, I would apologize to my blog for being such a reckless, reckless slacker. This had to be it.

The most unusual thing I’ve ever received as a text message is this:

Kevin: Mom.
Mom: How’s things?
Kevin: I’m really fine right now, except that I haven’t received the money you promised would be sent to me a month ago. But everything’s status quo. Except the money.
Mom: You have your ATM account, right?
Kevin: It’s below poverty line, Mom, and unless you’d be sending the validation code I’d be happier than ever.

NOTE: Not that I’m such a dollar-hunting son but she promised the moolah would be sent before October, and I’ve already bitten the bait for so long there’s no turning back now.

Mom: But your aunt and I are playing in the casino. We’ll talk later.

*signs out*

They’re probably betting their pockets out somewhere in Atlantic City, NJ. That place has huge casinos, I have heard. Mom even invited me there last summer but since I’m below eighteen (even my Mom thought I’m way older than the legal age, WTF) I denied her invitation.

The validation code I’m talking about would be the code you need to give to LBC or Western Union to procure transactions.

My ATM card is below poverty line. I’m downright honest. My wallet’s even more expensive than my account’s contents.

Who wouldn’t be drooling over the idea of going to some stage, any stage, and receive applause with the job you’re doing? Who wouldn’t be drooling over the idea of the mere action of thanking everybody for the appreciation and the acclaims?

Of course it must have felt good.

Of course I should have gotten another cellphone. That I should have at least voted is my greatest mistake; that I should have at least thought of my number, 2093, as one of the hundreds of slips of paper inside the fishbowl, waiting to be caught.

All I thought, history could repeat itself.

I actually brought (and this is unintentional) the same cellphone unit I had brought with me at last year’s Philippine Blog Awards. I was also situated right next, if not near, to Billycoy, which was the same guy I am sitting right next to during PBA 07.

But it must be bad luck to walk from Mall of Asia to One Esplanade just because some dickhead by the name of Rens to go to MOA. Of course I asked the driver, the ever-attentive taxi driver, if he could bring me at some place called One Esplanade, and he nodded several times. Yes sir, he probably said.

Maybe things conspire against you in its most unexpected. Right after I paid the taxi driver and just a couple of minutes after I slammed the cab’s door, found myself in front of some chicken restaurant and went to the sidewalk, I found my way to a security guard or anyone - just anyone who has this impeccable credibility with regard to directions. At that time, Ian sent a text message saying that “a cab would be great since One Esplanade’s quite far from Mall of Asia.”

I darted my eyes towards the bay and sifted the buildings until there stood One Esplanade, twice the distance of what I usually walk during Thursday classes here at UPLB (man, it was faaaaaar). It was outrageously far that I blamed both the taxi and the dickhead for this well-deserved walk I had to traverse besides the fact that I came all the way to Bulacan and that I am late (this is yet to become my personal trademark, being late). I did not enjoy the abandoned then-Manila Bay savannahs. I did not enjoy my being confident about my knowledge with the venue; that I should have at least looked at the map the organizers have provided carefully.

But behind my personal disappointments with the taxi driver and the cellphone raffle, I would still call this year’s Philippine Blog Awards as better: better and well-planned (and Shari suddenly wondered why I even thought it was well-planned).

By the way, the breaded porkchop wrapped in fried wonton was - in every sense of the word - delicious.

Also, I would like to congratulate Benj for bagging this year’s Personal Blog Award (all hail!). And of course, THE Mr. Gibbs Cadiz for bagging this year’s best Arts & Culture Blog Award and for finally meeting him!

For the company: Aaron, Ian, Ferbert, Alan, Micamyx, Poyt, Jeff, Mariano and Xienah.

And, by the waaaay, I’m so much into Lostphotograph, Octwelve and Dino Latoga’s Una theme (and I’m tempted to download it and install in here - but NOT, since I’m still digging Derek Punsalan’s masterpiece).

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When I was on my way home, I suddenly thought of changing URLs. I don’t smoke anymore (two weeks and counting). Heck, how many times have I been telling myself to stop smoking but after three weeks or so, I’d still do it. But I think this one’s permanent.

Things I need to happily rejoice about in life for I fucking-know-right that it has been a mess for the past few years.

• My laptop because everybody wants one.
• My camera because everybody wants one.
• My cute, cute face because everybody wants one.
• My optimistic approach in life because, well, everybody wants one.

And there’s also things shelved for improvement:

• A Macbook because everybody wants one.
• A kickass DSLR/Leica whatever-model because everybody wants one.
• A slimmer body trimmed from fats and overly-exposed… fats.
• A much more optimistic approach in life without any other expectations because, I want one.

But above all:

• To be with my both my parents and my sisters in New York and eat as many platefuls of pesto I wanted.

A while ago I was listening to I’m Still Here by Vertical Horizon and I remembered my first year in High School (since it’s always played on FM radio). I could exactly remember my servicemates and how fun life is back then–probably the usual rants of someone who miss being High School. Though when I was that young, I half-wished to be older, to have freedom, to go to College and do what I really want to do. Well, I thought, I wanted to just break free of all the reprimands and the demands of being a High School student from some religious school.

“We will never be able to feel entire satisfaction unless we would let go all of our dreams and aspirations in life. But then, that flaw of dreaming actually makes us better; makes us whole. That actually makes us a man.”

Maybe, just maybe, things would go my way.

I’m actually waiting for a turning point in my life. Not that I’m wishing that somebody would die; turning points doesn’t have to be that brutal and that miserable. Just anything from disguised motivators to winning the lottery (how would I even win if I’m not even buying tickets).

Whenever I watch the news and hear college students or even three year-olds dying just because of millions of reasons, I feel pity. I’m thinking, what happened in their life? Have they even attained any degree of satisfaction from their life? Have they even accomplished anything they wanted? I don’t know, and there’s no point of knowing anyway.

There’s this excerpt from my past blog which says “I’m not scared of dying, I just don’t want to“. That’s when I’ve been very much glued to Joan Didion’s nonfiction, “The Year of Magical Thinking“, which is about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

And I’m now reading John Gregory Dunne’s book, “Harp”, published in 1989.

It’s creepy to know that you’ve read both books from a happily married couple. It forms this irresistible dichotomy that binds them both into an entire book. It’s as if they rhyme, as if they fit together. The way Didion wrote about her husband’s death was really chilling to the bones, and the way Dunne wrote about his brother’s suicide was even more chilling. But the very thing that chillingly thrilled me the most is the fact that John Gregory Dunne, the one who wrote the book I’m reading, was long dead.

Not just dead like, say, Ernest Hemingway.

Dead, the way Didion wrote it; the way Didion knocked me out of my mind for sometime and just stared on the skies and there I entered a moment of magical thinking.

It’s just hard for me reading a book whom the author’s death I somehow knew. That’s probably it. I knew how he died so sudden. And I’m on my way excavating his life and where he lost his virginity, why he wanted to be a Yank, and how he didn’t mind Katharine Hepburn as his neighbor, while reading the book. Excavating someone’s memories, someone that’s dead. Not just historically dead like, say, Cleopatra.

I can’t explain.