day 1 in the land of smiles

i thought it’s best to keep an everyday record of my holiday in thailand as each day promises jammed activities. i don’t wanna leave out anything i’ve done around the area unrecorded.i don’t quite trust my memory to keep every detail of this cool trip.

we ( yes, i thought i was gonna take this trip alone. jeff who said he was just gonna see me to the airport actually was joining me.surprise,surprise! his arm must’ve really hurt from my beating.)we left manila at around 11 pm. on top, manila is dazzling with lights from red,orange, yellow and bits of white color. the complex geometric lines created by the lights along the highways and every street are stunning. As the aircraft went higher and farther the territory, manila looked like a blurry golden city.  some 3 hours after i could see bangkok from the top. it wasn’t at par with the manila lights and in my opinion it is because of the white lights that dominated the place.

the suvarnabhumi airport wowed me. it’s huge and very thai with the gigantic colorful thai monument that resemble the figures in most of the thai temples. after cueing ( a helluva line ) at the immigration booth, we found ourselves looking at the banner that read " welcome ruth and jeffrey!!! missionaries of the holy order of phoenix". i thought chu was kidding when he said he’d make a welcome banner. the freak actually did and was holding it up in the airport. we were laughing to death.

i had my first meal at the airport. i liked it.it’s a rice soup with prawns, wansoy, lemon grass and a bit of chilis that gave the entire thing a bit of a kick. i can’t remember what it’s called but it was light and refreshing.just the right food to take after a flight.

the ride home was smooth. the highways are wide. the cab drivers are honest. finally we got to chu’s neat apartment. it’s like being housed in a hotel.  we slepped for a little more than three hours and off to the first mall we went. it’s called The Emporium. it gives that power plant feel. stuff are expensive given that stores are mostly designer boutiques i normally see only in greenbelt.  it’s pretty quiet there as there are not too many people, mostly are caucasians. we headed up to the floor with restaurant rows. it’s like our foodcourt only the place was posh. it’s got this nice view of a well maintained park and most of the sukhumvit area. my second meal was sumptuous. i couldn’t get enough of the soft fillet of fish in my spicy soup.

from the Emporium we took the train to another mall called the Paragon. It’s a huge mall and also very posh.kids are all over the place because the underground level is the ocean park. we made a good round of the mall before we headed up to our first real tour, the bangkok temples. we took a ferry in the chao prya river to get to port 8, then another ferry to get across. alas our first temple called wat arun or the temple of dawn. it was magnificent. this collosal, colorful temple embellished with some sort of tiles, gold glass that shines when the sun hits it and statues from ground up is surrounded by beautiful thai palace-looking structures in white walls and gold roofs. the main temple allows for climbers to reach the second to the topmost tier. the stairs are very steep but one has got to get to the top because the view of the chao praya river is priceless.

to get to our next temple known as wat po, the temple of the reclining buddha, we had to take another ferry to cross the river. when we got to wat po, the entrance booth was already closed. we were allowed in nonetheless. the temple guard ( well sort of ) said we were lucky because we got to get in for free. more than that, we were lucky to see the splendid bronze buddha of an exeptionally huge size. from head to toe, the buddha covered the entire length and width of the temple. we took pictures near the chest area of the buddha and we looked like ants beside it. we were supposed to go the yet another temple but we had a dinner reservation at one of the floating restaurants. we didn’t wanna miss the boat that would ferry us to the bigger boat that was to be our dinner place. we had a feast of both the food and the view. cruising the river while having dinner’s just the most romantic thing. i recommend couples to do it.it’s amazing. there were those moments during the cruise i’d just go silent and absorb the moment. the lights from the refulgent buildings and other boats, the nice breeze, it’s terrifically soothing.

the view, the food, the laughters, the entire experience exceeded expectation.

turning meanie

i nearly fell off the chair when i read those three words. one was brutally mispelled and the last one, oh boy i don’t even want to say it. suffice it to say that all three are unambiguously telling of some form of egotism( i seriously have no problem with people who love themselves or are confident of themselves. i’m a self-confessed self-loving creature myself ), the bit of the problem comes in when these pompous descriptions of one’s self becomes an overassessment tilting toward arrogance. the meaning of the word and that characteristic of the person that word is used for purposes of description obviously contradict each other.i was amused. it’s mean.i just gotta quit wandering around friendster really. i’m turning into a meanie. or maybe i’m just bitter and i wanna feel better. either way, i gotta quit this crap.

aaarggghhhhhh!!!

i should be happy i’m flying in less than 48 hours. i should be ecstatic in fact. i’ve been waiting for this to happen. chu has all the tours planned out he even sent me a primer he made which was lovely and pretty hilarious. the thing is there are stuff i haven’t accomplished yet that’s been dampening the supposedly bouncy, oh-yay-oh-yay mood.

i have this calendar i keep marked with the stuff i need to accomplish by the day. special dates are especially marked. it’s killing me right now that i haven’t done, haven’t accomplished what i have set me to do.

for almost two weeks now i’m just sitting in front of a pile of papers, photocopies trying so hard to get me started with the revision to the paper i’m writing. my breain cells are whacked or what? i just can’t put things together. i try very hard to sleep at night and the thought of the paper would not leave me. every night i’d tell myself i gotta hit the ground running the next day but i just couldn’t do more that reading my literature. i go to the library and all but i couldn’t move forward.it’s upsetting. this is my future ( well kind of ) and i feel like i’m really screwing it.

i know that whatever happens i’m ready to take the consequences. i’m mature in that department.but, the big but is that what and where i am at right now is totally immature. i just couldn’t get this thing done. i’m feeling like i need a hard kick in the butt to just get these brain cells going.

sometimes i’m thinking i may just be worn out or something, depressed or something that’s why this is not going great for me but dang it it’s just no excuse. i’m beginning to think that i might not have know myself really, or that i thought i was this but really i’m the opposite. for the longest time i think i believe i’m driven but i just don’t see that right now.some people think i’m a go getter and all but really, now that i think about it, i’m just not. i’m mediocre. what’s with law school, my performance in my job, the only job i know how to do. i’m starting to believe i’m really laidback to put it euphemistically. it’s a freaky . i wanna be the driven, go getter type. i’m not sure if i can. the thought that i can’t is kind of freaking me out.

i need some good sense knocked into my hard head.

playing

my fingers are still really painful from playing colby caillat and chris daughtry.

it’s been years since i last touch a guitar. some four days ago i decided to play again since there was a guitar lying around. it felt incredibly freeing; a nice escape from a day to day blur.

singing while playing is a much, much better alternative to listening to music and identifying with every single thought, feelings and such crap in every song reinforcing further holding on to something that’s not even worth holding on to.

the strums and the plucks, painful as they are are comforting. i blow my fingertips in fact after each song to prep me for another song. i’ll keep playing until it won’t hurt anymore.

the idiot box

ok so i have a tv at home right now since more than a week ago thanks to a friend of mine who just came home from sidney.no she didn’t buy me tv and i would not let her. it’s an extra tv her sister has and since she’s crashed my place that’s got an imaginary no-tv-allowed policy written on my walls and being a tv person she figured she’d bring the thing with her.

i’m a tv addict ( well, my sister said so. she’s enumerated supposed syptoms i exhibit like i’m some freak ). so since i’m here to make something of my life i figured i cannot have a tv at home. i’m hard on this rule.i don’t give in to niel’s constant wanting for one. just won’t happen you see.

now there’s tv. i’m getting lazier and lazier by the day. i tried to reflect a bit about my productivity this week and oh my gosh i’m so embarassed i have 3 planners. i’ve stayed up late and woke up almost lunch time.it’s nuts. my routine’s ruined.it’s so hard to build a routine but so easy to break the same.it’s nuts.i’m nuts.

anyway this will be the last day i have a tv at home. it’s going tomorrow. this morning i was watching something on etc and there was an ad or preview of a particular show i don’t remember now. what struck me was the question this girl asked.she said " if he ( bf/husband or special someone ) forgot about your birthday, what would you do?". i was amused at how girls can be so girls fussing about dates and all. it is such a big deal that one remembers birthday, anniversary and for crying out loud monthsary. lordy!if special someone forgot any of these dates it’s like he committed a crime with the heaviest penalty under the RPC. i don’t understand it really but i do and can identify with the general gil population in this regard. why is it so difficult for girls to just let it slide when it happens? it really is emotionally dumb sometimes.

on another note, why can being dum or dumbing oneself in certain situations attractive to the opposite sex? i don’t understand it. like this someone who chose a loser, i.e. jobless, out of school and is not bothered about it over someone who’s in school taking his MBA. i mean, what is this about?

i still firmly believe i should not have a tv at home.

the kingdom rocks

i love it. i can’t get enough of it.it’s entertaining.it’s a well written one.it’s now in my list of movies i can watch over and over.

i’ve actually been meaning to watch it since the cinemas started screening it. i just never really get around to doing it until 2 days ago on dvd. i can’t make excuses like "i’m busy" and all that crap because looking back, i’d fail the test/ standard for calling or labeling someone as busy. i remember advocating it to my friends and not so friends; i’ve emphatically said " you have to watch it.i heard it’s amazing" even before i watched it. crazy i know but when joey says it’s good then i believe it like the word of God and advertise it to people i know whenever i get the chance ( movie producers should seriously start paying for marketing their product ).

i won’t start narrating what the story is about because anyone can google the synopsis for this or just rent a dvd or buy a pirated one, whatever you know. the thing that amazes me about this movie is that it had so much real emotions.it’s supposed to be an action movie. it is. the first scenes were like explosions and firing all over the place. in the progression of the movie there were so much blood and killing. it’s a serious movie no doubt but it gave those few moments when you just laugh at the conversation happening, some pretty funny situations too like when the arab col was trying to explain to jennifer garner how they tried to give her privacy by putting a wall divider ( the nbi team was housed in a gym ) and that given she’s a girl they tried to look for something pink and they just couldn’t. the most interesting thing i suppose was how powerful the movie was in the emphasizing how in a conflict people what ever race they belong to, which side they come from do value life, do put premium on the same things and feel for the same things, that friendships transcend culture and race. it’s beautiful how this movie juxtaposed what joey termed as the human side of racial/ideological clashes. at the end of the movie you just couldn’t take a side.it educates you. that’s what films should be about aside from being entertaining.

don’t fall for a nice guy

lately i’ve been quite successful in trying to keep busy with reading this and that, watching this and that in the hopes of exhausting myself to death so i could have my precious uninterrupted sleep at night. this afternoon however, i’ve become a bit restless again after reading a magazine, 3 articles from the global experience and a chapter from this difficult impact assessment handbook i photocopied. 2 pages to the end of the chapter of my photocopy, i was reading words i couldn’t recognize anymore…they’re in english but it was like reading russian ( i have little phrase book i read when i’m in the bathroom ). the thing is, i wanted to escape. escape from the reading, escape the thoughts that divorces my attention from my reading. i thought gonuts donuts would help. i got up therefore and went to buy some. i got stuck for awhile in a bookstore. these days my favorite’s the self-help section. before i got there, a book with good guys, nice guys words boldly written on the cover caught my attention. i looked at it closely and it said something like us not needing guys to be nice, rather we need them to be good. it reminded of this book i barely read some 10 or so years ago ( ages ago i know ). it said something about not choosing a nice guy to fall for. nice guys break hearts. i’m sure there were explanations why and how but i don’t remember now. i thought the nice guy concept was a perfect break for my antsy brain cells. it made laugh a bit. and sure, engrossing on the thought of how many girls actually fall into this kind of pit ( which in darwin’s words is utter masochism ) is a refreshing analysis after getting immersed in the israel-palestenian conflict readings.

i got me a box of three gonuts donuts, a hot black coffee.this is the good life baby!

comments

last night was the fourth straight night i have been wide awake instead of dozing off. for some unknown reason i couldn’t sleep until around 6 am.i spend the whole night trying to sleep, thinking, trying to sleep, thinking, trying to sleep, thingking…. i might’ve ran out of things to think about when i caught myself grinning at the comments friends told me over the past months. they’re coming incessantly ( well sort of ) in a flashback. some of my favorites are the following:

1. " i think you’re a masochist" - tetet saying over coffee engaging me in my juvenile rants

2. " don’t go to the mall wearing  skinny jeans!you’ll  make people hate you." - darwin ’s eternal rant  everytime we meet.

3. "tol, wala ka talagang kwenta"- jepoy telling me after me begging him to help get on our boat. i insisted on jumping into the still water confident that i won’t drown because of the life jacket.guess what it didn’t work.

4. " …dol dynamite, pensaba tu mint candy, chene gale kel chocolate adentro" - part of ador’s series of text messages for his post xmas gift.

5. " ang yabang mo kasi  " - ate mel  telling me one time we we’re having dinner, i laughed my ass off.

6. " i want you to be happy. get a life. flirt. "- sitsiritsit’s friend admonishing me during the recently concluded ANC square-off season

7. " akala ng classmate ko mulato ka " - pinoy reporting about a classmate of his who thought i was a foreigner ( yet again ). boy, do i love my color.

8. " you are a V****A, thinking like a P***S" - bestfriend’s comment about my stand on a lot of things that does not represent the general female population.

this is what one writes about when he/she’s  caught up in those ultra boring days of a supposedly fabulous life.

of dreams and of fish

i’m still chasing a dream. my fish is still in it.

the-afternoon-snack-called-pastil-buddy

months before my latest homecoming, he’s volunteered to pick me up at the airport. cool i thought. if there’s one person who bugs me so much about going home it’s him. he never missed reminding me about it at every opportunity to talk over those little mobile gadgets ( txt and call ).

a week or so before my scheduled flight, he’s been doing the countdown like how radio stations do the christmas countdown.

he was in the airport an hour earlier than the plane’s (delayed) take off. crazy! i don’t think anyone could be that excited ( or so i think ).

i don’t really how it was but one day i just realized this person’s someone i can’t afford not to be part of my life.

it just used to be "heys" and lots of laughters, me teasing how bad his haircut is it made him 10 years older than me, or me constantly picking on his inability to pronounce "r", or me raising an eyebrow on a hilarious case during mock debates. i’ve been really mean to him with all those teasing…i remember him saying " nah ma’am…."

despite my being a meanie,he’d volunteer to drive me around. he’s been excited always to talk about the "pastil" place near jumbo bridge. one particular vacation,we drove there almost every afternoon. i must have eatenmore than 20 sticks of isaw. real good time.

he can crack me up just with a silly text message. just the other day i was telling him how he is not my dinner- coffee buddy.my point in saying is that our friendship is kinda unique in the sense that it wasn’t nurtured over coffee and dinner. he retorted saying " so i’m the midnight snack guy…?" i said no.more like the "joyride-pastil" buddy. he protested. boy was i grinning delightfully.

with all the hung ups i have in life, all the insecurities and b*******s happening to me, he’s my comfort zone. for some odd reason, he knows just when to be there.he’s timing’s always perfect. when i feel sick to my stomach because ofmy stupidity, out of the blue i get a good dose of bear hug. i’m a softee who thinks she’s a toughie he said. maybe. i guess he knows me well.

i’ve not forgotten what you told me over the only ocassion we had coffee together. i’m grateful for the genuine concern.

thank you for your friendship.life’s a little easier, happier more beautiful with you around!

cheers!