Menthol-Guy

Name five places you want to find in a mall:

• bookstores (Fully Booked, Powerbooks or even better, Booksale)
• t-shirts shops like David and Goliath (recently I discovered Bleach Catastrophe a weird but extraordinary place to buy clothes) and Billabong.
• a Japanese, American, Italian or Greek fine dining restaurant.
• a coffee shop with ashtrays and chairs and tables outside.
• Timezone.

Name three games you want to find in an arcade (i.e. Timezone)

• Air hockeys are nice. It’s definitely my favorite game, since it’s not just challenging but it’s the only game in Timezone or any other arcade I know where I get to see my opponent right in the eye. I know there’s nothing much about that, but it’s just really nice to laugh with them and seeing them laugh all at the same time.
• Yamaha drumsets, even if it usually makes me sweat like a pig.
• That game where you get to throw balls at monkeys and pour out your rage at them. (At Timezone, it’s Pang! Pang! or something like that.)

Name three orders you usually order in a coffee shop

• Pesto (in pasta or in baguettes) since it goes well with coffee and cigarettes.
• Iced mocha frappucino (though at Starbucks I usually order a warm Praline Mocha) or Mudslide.
• Cranberry juice. I love buying cranberry juice but I’ll always end up not even emptying half of it. It’s weird, really.

Name things you usually talk about with your friends at the mall

Recently we played this game wherein you get to connect a certain someone or something to another one. Say, Sharon Stone with KC Concepcion. You have to connect them in a required number of connections or so-called “levels”, say four levels. There are certain rules also, like it should be at least factual (or at least known to all the players involved).

Say, connect a nail polish to a doorknob in four levels:

1. 1) Well, Caronia is a nail polish brand.
2. 2) Caronia has this billboard somewhere in Edsa corner Quezon Avenue. (As it turns out, though, they didn’t know this one.)
3. 3) At Edsa, you can also find Wilcon’s Depot (one at Cubao, near Makro, if I’m not mistaken, and another one in North Edsa–somewhere near the dilapidated Philippine Rabbit bus station).
4. 4) Wilcon’s sells a lot of doorknobs.

I know it’s bullshit but that’s just a decent connection for me. There are also a lot of wacky challenges like connecting Mahal to a light bulb, or a certain geek Geology classmate to Robinson’s.

Also, I usually talk a lot about books with my friends, and my college life as well. I hate talking about certain private stuff with my friends–especially in a mall.

Still at the mall, name at least three people you want to look at for minutes

• Foreigners–they don’t amaze me. I just really want to look at their faces and how they converse in a mall in the Philippines. As it turns out, though, nothing hasn’t really changed in them whether or not they’re in Palo Alto or at Trinoma. They still speak English and they still wear the same clothes.
• Also, salesladies/salesmen who go out for a demo (at SM, they’re famous for promoting steel knives or food processors and flexible chopping boards). I sort of liked watching their demos for some time, though now I can’t help myself but look away from them. I don’t know why–maybe I pity them in some ways since no one’s really after what they’re demoing anyway.
• Lastly, beautiful salesladies. I’ve seen one when Dad and I bought stuff at Abercrombie and Fitch at Fifth Ave–they’re just awesome wearing tank tops and mini shorts. I can’t help but stare at them for minutes.

Name three places you window-shop the most

• Lacoste (especially their striped collared tees!!!)
• Fossil or Tag Heuer
• Zara Man (I don’t buy clothes there without Dad, heck even with Dad I wouldn’t buy anything there)

Name the three best malls you’ve ever been to

• That mall in Honolulu Dad and I used to go to, I think it’s called Ala Moana or something (it makes me relive my childhood memories)
• Trinoma–it’s always on-the-way and it’s convenient at some point
• That mall in Paramus, New Jersey where I used to buy stuff at ukay-ukay (I forgot the name but it’s not Marshal’s or Target).

I don’t really believe in horoscopes, but when a friend had forwarded a text message about the misfortune of the [year of the] Ram (or otherwise called Sheep or Goat), I couldn’t help but wonder. (At first I asked her if 1991’s included; I have no idea with these things). There’s no point in verifying these stuff anyway, but I’m curious–just about everyone’s gripped by their curiosity about the future–if this is true, or if this is just another age-old tradition to foretell the future. They say there’s no harm in believing these things, but it would be such a shame to admit that I believe in these things: it’s almost admitting that your life is deeply rooted within the constellations or the heavenly bodies in general, and that–I think–sucks.

I was born 1st of March, 1991, which makes me–thanks to grade school slumbook questions–a Piscean. The fish. I don’t eat fish that much, or seafoods in general (with the exception of scallops and baked tahong with salted butter and grated Quickmelt cheese that strings to your teeth), but I love water–I’m a water person, as how my friend puts it. I don’t drink softdrinks, I rarely drink juices (I hate, hate, hate citrus juices) and well… I drink beer. I love swimming. I dreamt of being a surfer when I was fifteen, and I just love playing with rainwater when I was young.

My Mom was the regnant influence of my slight belief in horoscopes (which lasted for a couple of days, I think). When I was in third grade, Mom would turn on the TV and watch the horoscope of Zenaida Seva (a curly-haired woman in her forties, massively built, huge eyes, and was the star of Magandang Umaga Bayan’s horoscope segment, “Syzygy”) and she would tell me to take note or at least remember Capricorn’s horoscope. She’s crazy like that.

So while remembering Capricorn, I also take note of Pisces (you can’t help but notice Pisces anyway since it’s two or three zodiacs away from Capricorn). Most of her horoscopes were very vague (well, making horoscopes specific would make it somehow less credible–say, you’d meet your crush at 7-11).

Samples would be “hope is within reach today” or “appease your friends and a certain gift of goodwill will knock at your room”. I don’t really get it. I can’t even remember them at the end of the day, so I think they’re bullshit that way. I couldn’t verify if the horoscope’s true–or even if it’s true, I’m unsure whether I’m the one giving reasons to make it true or not. Does this hope thing pertains to my flunking 79 at Math? Or probably that project in Sibika where I need to draw Aklan and Antique? What certain gift of goodwill, anyway?

I thought of Mom as someone who wanted to get rid of the suspense of life itself, unfogging the future, taking notes of certain things which aren’t even halfway substantial, but I still respect her belief. I would always say, “to each his own.”

Today, I don’t think she’s still watching–or reading–horoscopes (or worse, subscribing at some *gasps* horoscope website). I mean, she’s old and she must have known that those crappy horoscopes aren’t really working.

My sister who works in the bank a couple of years ago said that palmistry works. She has this client who, in one of their banking sessions or something, read her palm and prognosticated that the robber of her shoulder bag a week ago was a lanky man with slightly big eyes and has a certain passion for robbing things. (That meant my meth-crazed brother.)

We shivered that moment. It was creepy.

There are of course a lot of secondhand accounts I’ve been hearing from friends and relatives alike, saying that palmistry is something personality-based, that our palms mirror ourselves and our fate or destiny or whatever-they-call-it. It’s probably true, though scientifically speaking, it’s implausible (like any other pseudoscience).

I think that palmistry attacks the person itself: it addresses that particular person, the palm, the sex, the age, etc., and not the birthdates and birthmonths of a certain individual. It’s something personal, something deep and reflective.

Yet again, unfogging the future would be like killing the suspense of life itself. And I hate spoilers a lot anyway. I wouldn’t want to be imprisoned by the prophesies of those palm readers and horoscope devotees. I’d rather be at the driver’s seat.

_{P.S.: I’ve updated my room’s pictures. Do visit the previous post. :)}

Yesterday I did a paint job in my room.

It was slightly unexpected that the colors turned out to be Meditteranean–Greek blue and white. It was vibrant to the eyes, very lively and relaxing; these beach colors are just the colors I wanted my room to have (though I sort of hoped that it should be at least darker, like midnight blue). It sort of inflames my dying passion for surfing–or swimming, or water sports in general. (I’m such a die-hard surfer that back then I bought lots of Quiksilver and Billabong stuff, hoping that I could swim somewhere in Redondo Beach or Perth since the odds of balancing myself in a surfboard are slim.) Now I’m matured enough to quit the surfing dream.

Funny that my room’s former color is… pink. I was graduating from High School when I quickly hopped in to my sister’s room–together with my belongings–the very night after we had dropped her at NAIA. It was embarrassing how pink was once my room’s color. It’s really feminine, though my friends would say they haven’t really wondered about my room being pink since a huge graduate portrait of my sister hangs on the wall. “I knew it wasn’t really your room,”  remarked most of my friends.

My dreams of converting this pink room into my own started at college, but my Dad thought it was bullshit since I only go home and sleep in my room during weekends. There’s no point of repainting it when in fact, I wasn’t even staying there so often. So what I did back then was to move out excess furniture of my sister. It helped me create some space and breathe in my room.

Last week, though, I suddenly had this itch of repainting it. I thought that now I’m turning eighteen this March, and that it would be nice if my Dad would be so kind to provide the funds for the paint and the rollers and the technical stuff I wasn’t aware of, unheard-of things like enamel and flat and glossy paint and the addictive smell of thinner. It would be a cool stunt of being independent, of being an eighteen year-old.

“As long as you paint it on your own, then sure.”

I took summer painting classes when I was in 6th grade but it was bullshit, that my instructor, Bobby something, was even amazed that I could draw still life so fast that he advised me to do painting in a canvas right away. (His amazement clearly stated that he wasn’t really that good in painting.) Sadly, I haven’t even bought a canvas and subsisted with paper. For the next few meetings all we did was to mix paint and play at the monkey bars at the quadrangle. Nothing exciting happened.

But, meh, painting my room should have been easy. I mean, there’s no pointillism or cubism involved in here. This should be as easy as freehand drawing, only much messy.

Saturday morning, my uncle and I biked our way to the nearby hardware store. It smelled of rubber and latex and wood. The only thing I told him was that I’m planning to paint my ceilings white and my walls blue, but I didn’t really said what shade of blue. “I’ll buy a blue and a white paint and you’ll be the one doing the mixing.” Okay, I said, that should be easy.

Balancing two huge pints of paint in both sides of my handlebar en route home wasn’t easy, though.

I did the painting from 10 am to 8 pm. It was stressful, especially the ceiling part since you have to look up and paint it with the rollers and the paint would spray into your face, into your arms and your shirt. I never thought that such a small room would require enormous amounts of energy, and that I was the only one who did the job aside from the maid who would hand me a sandwich and a juice from time to time.

_{At last, I’ve arranged it.}

After the paint job, though, and after moving the furniture in and arranging it exactly the way I wanted, with the help of the maid, I told myself that this is independence. I love my room now. It’s like MTV pimped my ride too–that I have no choice but to thank everybody out there in the West Coast for watching MTV. It’s that kind of fun and satisfaction.

Yet this is just one of the earlier chapters of the refurbishment.

I have to buy:

• canvas curtains,
• a lampshade,
• pinstriped bedsheets,
• a bigger carpet,
• a waste bin,
• a reading desk,
• and a kickass bookshelf to topple them all.

I think all the moolah I’ve been saving every week would go to these expenditures.

Do you have any idea where to buy these things? Thrift shops? Anywhere cheap but still has kickass quality?

_{Wouldn’t you want to be a cat for one afternoon?}

It was Thursday when I saw a cat (actually, there were two; one flew right away when I sat at the pebbled corridors, taking aim for a shot. Probably, the cat ran away out of fear that I might send their picture to icanhascheezburger) sleeping along the corridors of the apartment grounds.

Gawd, these cats. They didn’t even have any idea what’s happening around the world. They don’t worry about Obama or even Viagra-related spam comments. They’d just lie there, sleeping or probably meowing at night. The cat’s just lying there, probably assuming that life is nothing but easy shit and cat food.

Thursday afternoons also happened to be my rest period. This is where I get to open the speakers, tune in to Incubus, Mason Proper and Maroon 5 and take a shower and read a book. I’d simply turn my phone silent and put it away from me.

“I’d love, love, love to be that cat, right there.” When I told this to my dormmate, he simply said “if you’re that cat, I’m gonna be some cat-hater guy who would kick you out of my doorstep. Really.”

_{He’s the kind of guy who would counterattack anything and everything you say or believe in. He’s funny like that.}

Oh, I want to rest. I want to go to some beach and just lie there in the sands and everything.

But I wouldn’t want to be a cat and go to beach. It’s just either I’d morph into a cat and lie there or I’d still be me going to the beach.