photo courtesy of people.com

… someday. <3

my cell phone broke down last night for the second time.

last year, it was a black screen. last night, it started restarting itself and then this morning it just somewhat died on me. =(

so i spent most of this morning waiting in line at the nokia care center in glorietta, lifeless n6288 in hand. i’ve had it for more or less a year. i’d never dropped it, never gotten it wet; it even had a screen protector. it had bubble bash and the mobile version of guitar hero (cries) that we had just finished last night before going to bed. oh had i known it would be our last time together (a tear fell.) it allowed me to check my mail, a few blogs, whenever there was signal. it took great pictures, plus it sent stuff from my phone to flickr directly. (cries some more)

even with a service phone (i bought a nokia 2626 for less than 3k) i feel still somewhat incomplete. for someone who names her gadgets, this is really a heartbreak.

what’s even more heartbreaking is the fact that they have to delete all of its contents to get it back up and running again (wails). remember the last time i had to part with a phone, i had to delete some 1,+++ messages? at least i pushed the delete all button. this time i won’t be able to do it myself. =( call me sentimental but this phone was my ligaw phone (hah if we could call something such). the jokes folder may not be as sizeable as before, but… you know how it is.

*sighs*

*cries*

i’m thinking of taking down the old blogspot haunt one of these days, if only to put it up again in a much simpler, more coherent mega-site of sorts. blame it on serialcomma.net and the simplicity that i’m in love with. i’m itching to resume my hot passionate underwear-scorching affair with html. yun lang, for sentimentality’s sake, i’m torn between just keeping it the way it is (design and spacing and all) and overhauling it almost entirely (keeping only the text, a few pictures). decisions, decisions. how do we let go of blogs? (thoughts?)

anyway, next Friday (Aug. 22, incidentally also our 11th monthsary <3) my sister would be holding her undergraduate seminar. i’m taking a day off from work to attend it, at the risk of perhaps not understanding a thing. she needs me there. so, anybody else interested in talking about fixing broken hearts? yun lang, she’ll talk about it in zebrafish. don’t ask me why. and don’t ask me why i’m actually excited. i think it could be for the sole realization that my sister has indeed come a looooong way.

*with apologies to Stephen King. this is about your book anyway. 

I’ve never picked up a book by Stephen King – mainly because I was afraid to be afraid, to be haunted. But last night, I did pick up one of his books, and it couldn’t have come at a better time – it was his writing memoir, On Writing.

And so, Mr King says to me:

“You approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: You must not come lightly to the blank page.

“I’m not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it’s not the moral Olympics, and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car, or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.”  (pages 92-93)

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Bilib talaga ako kay Jiggy Manicad at sa tapang niya sa mga ganitong tipo ng coverage. Sukat bang dapat magcocover ka lang ng eleksyon, pero instead e naipit ka sa giyera. Ang tibay at ang tapang.

Bukod pa diyan, nakapag-file pa siya ng istoryang nakakagalit talaga: yung pagkamatay ni Marine Cpl. Angelo Abeto. (basa dito: TV reporter recounts 4-hour dying of a Marine corporal)

excerpt:

Manicad found himself witnessing the agony of the severely wounded Marine Cpl. Angelo Abeto, begging for a “medivac” as he lay bleeding for four long hours.

No Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopter arrived to evacuate Abeto and three other wounded Marines and a militiaman, Manicad said. …

“We learned that on the way to Zamboanga, Corporal Abeto died,” Manicad said on the phone from Lamitan, Basilan.

The way he saw it, the Marine, who was hit by shrapnel from mortar fire, had bled to death.

“His whole body was already pale when I saw him lying on the gurney at the Marines camp. He kept on shouting, ‘Ang sakit na ng ulo ko! Hindi ako makahinga! (I have such a headache! I can’t breathe!) Medivac! Medivac!’” Manicad recounted.

Four of Abeto’s fellow soldiers stayed by his side, rallying him to hang on and fight for his life.

Manicad said he had heard a number of Marines complain that military choppers were immediately available when generals needed them but that it was often a futile wait for wounded soldiers.

On the phone, however, Marine Lt. Gen. Nelson Allaga, chief of the AFP Western Mindanao Command, denied that Abeto had died from loss of blood and that the PAF had not sent choppers to Tipo-Tipo.

“[Abeto] did not die because of loss of blood. He was hit in the head and back. He was seriously wounded,” Allaga told the Inquirer. Quoting military doctors, he said Abeto would not have survived his injuries.

(emphasis mine)

tapos na ang eleksyon sa ARMM – abangan ko na lang kwento ni jobert. pero mukhang mahaba-haba pang usapan ang Bangsamoro, lalo na’t mukhang madadagdagan ito ng ugong ng Cha-cha. Hayyyyy. Sana may magandang balita ang Olympics para masaya naman.

Something has to be said about Tara Santelices, who is currently fighting for her life in Medical City’s ICU after being shot in the head in a hold-up incident in Cainta, Rizal on Wednesday. She was with a friend around past midnight onboard a jeep to Marikina when a man announced a hold-up. He put a bullet through her head; the kind that doesn’t have any exit wounds, the kind that fragments inside. That day was also, incidentally, her birthday.

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today’s feature heartbreak is brought to me by wordcamp philippines.

times like these, i wish i could:

• smoke.
• revert to stress tabs.
• or both.

as you may have already figured out by now, i have a very addictive personality. that is, i seem to always have to have something to be addicted to, in, with — just something. (and you know it’s not prepositions.)

it’s just that… it’s too tiring to have to get through stressful days without nicotine. or rice. or nicotine AND rice. but mostly just nicotine. sometimes really i just don’t get it. the last time things were horrible, like, hair-tearing horrible, like, where is the rest of my time-horrible, it definitely wasn’t within the past five months. therefore, the smoking was still there.

but i’ve taken myself through 134 days. hay. i admit, having quit smoking thus far has somewhat boosted my confidence — of the “i can quit smoking = i can do anything!”-variety.

but sometimes you feel like you just have to hit someone, i guess. or kick something really hard. or run until something starts hurting. just something.

i feel like i haven’t been doing anything else other than work these days. it’s not like i don’t have time for myself - wait, scratch that, because can you actually count sleeping and staring into space whenever i’m not as work as ‘time for myself’? this is just not me. i can’t even write anymore. the thing is, i live two blocks away. if you’re going to say something like it’s impossible that i don’t have time, i’d say the same thing — this is utterly impossible.

but the thing is this - it’s 10 p.m., an hour past my usual off, and i’d just finished half of what i’m supposed to do for SIM. i’m off my game, i’m taking too long. and i am actually worried i’d have to be here for monday’s SONA. i miss futsal. and my good eyesight. and having time to write fiction.

i miss going home late — but not because of work. i miss beer until morning and my wayward ways, to a degree. hah. videoke na nga lang.

clearly, heath ledger is a runaway winner. sorry na lang sa lahat ng makakalaban niya sa awards this year — i could already see him racking up posthumous awards for this one. unforgettable and scary.

want to know how i got these scars?

shiver, man. shiver.

* * *

neck-deep into work. for some reason, things feel a bit tighter than usual. hmmm. read through the president’s state of the nation address last year. a litany of names, mostly.

on other news:

• oil prices are still spiking, but the peso’s doing a bit better day by day.
• inflation’s expected to breach 13 percent by october.
• i am trying to lose weight by the end of the year.
• we’ve been together for ten solid months.
• i’ve been cigarette-less for more than 5 months now.
• i can’t write anything other than what is necessary, which is sad.

Caught an interesting replay of “Straight Talk” on ANC, a show hosted by Pia Hontiveros, the other day. The topic of the debate: The controversial reproductive health bill. Her panel of guests featured Rep. Janette Garin of Iloilo, who solely defended the bill against a representative from the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and former BIR head Liwayway Vinzons Chato.

Things came to a head earlier this week when a bishop announced that solons who endorsed the bill should not be given communion because supporting the bill was immoral because it endorsed abortion. Garin, a medical doctor by profession, reiterated that the bill also condemns abortion and that the use of contraceptives was not equivalent to abortion.

Of course, we all know the Catholic Church has always opposed artificial methods such as the use of condoms and pills, among others. The government, despite the supposed separation of Church and State enshrined in the Constitution, has refused to take a progressive stance on population control.

What is even more shocking is the fact that, apparently, the Church believes that the Philippine population is actually decreasing, thus there is no need for population control, much less family planning. I regret not having taken out my phone for a quick picture; I really should have taken a screen grab of that quote when it was flashed on ANC the other day.

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