Category Archives: A Lot on My Plate

food, lifestyle, travel, writing, toned down, vintage

I bought myself a cupcake.

Posted in A Lot on My Plate, Fragments by

Not a mochi or a cupcake fan, but I happen to be neighbors with Sophie’s Mom. It’s a good excuse for not bleeding my wallet dry elsewhere that is posh like Sonja’s, although it’s just a little less pricey to go local. But it’s just a stroll away from my rented place, and I was with friends who came over to sightsee what my little cul-de-sac has in store for twentysomethings who, at this point, haven’t gotten used to the grownup things– making a living, keeping their jobs, switching them, settling for rented places, suspending their beliefs that there is more to their lives than the sum of these.

We were infatuated with a studio unit with a picture-window view of Osmeña Highway and a nightly audio perk coming from PNR’s trains. We planned a trip to Cartimar to have our 500 days of summer bikes assembled. I’d thought you only buy pets there. We negotiated the budget in our heads and with each other. We looked forward to this interdependence that is almost always tossed in a package deal with independence. And because that’s just about the pretending, or dip, we can do into this grownup thing, we had to end up at Sophie’s Mom.

Because pink, paisley, saccharine moments with friends, and free WiFi. Younger, we had afforded to dream for ourselves and the world (I want to be a doctor / lawyer / the President to help the poor). Now who are the millennials kidding? We can only afford to be distracted.

Tomorrow I’ll have the unit reserved. I bought myself caramel coffee and a cupcake.

In a few words, my state of mind

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Nostalgia sweeps, memory bleeds, emotions are traitors, and I weep

Nostalgia sweeps, memory bleeds, emotions are a traitor, and I weep

A stray shot, nothing particularly interesting here, but it accidentally documented a memory: of the chain link-fenced plot across the back of my office building; despite the second-hand smoke, I would spend my afternoon breaks with friends across and stare, sometimes feigning spacey, at this incongruous ecosystem in our side of the city.

Soon trees were sawed, the enormous crane truck sputtered industrial noises, and opaque walls replaced the chain link fence (while the pseudo-spacey converted into concrete thoughts, as I would turn a quarter of a century at one point). It was like being in a Joni Mitchell song. And as soon as they began paving paradise across our hangout place I spent less and less time there.

Only now I realize that the photo documented something more than I cared to admit while I was still in the thick of things, things I was forced to say goodbye to, even old habits, old friends. Or perhaps I’m just overthinking.

*****
I wrote this because a friend interviewed me about living and working in Makati, and I feel like giving out to her a draft of a press release. This is just a fraction of my true answer.

Lie to me

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This is the point I ‘fess up as your downright creepy stalker-friend– close. Or the point I tell you that I am Batman– sorry to disappoint. Or that I’m CIA (insulting to what the I stands for), a closet bisexual (no offense to real ones), the daughter of Ayn Rand and God (sorry, editor’s joke).

No. This is the point I dare you to lie to me.

Because like Emma Swan*, Jennifer Morrison’s character from Once Upon A Time, I may have a gift– and a curse– for telling when a person is lying to me. Maybe everyone has. Maybe I’ve become too attached to Cal Lightman and co. and Fox never afforded me a sort of closure, which could have debriefed me from knowing that a liar will always lie about his lies. So, I go by what I know. Lying 101: If you don’t want to get caught, avoid the permutations of “I AM NOT LYING”. Why act on the presumption that people think you are? That’s a free lesson for all my *wink* honest friends.

Anyway, I found out a secret when I was in high school, and it was, to qualify, huge. I had been able to keep it for approximately five years until I confronted the involved. So the curse is not being able to tell one off that she is lying. (I use he and she alternately to express my non-bias toward genders). Maybe the curse is actually a non-choice, a passive-aggressive disorder symptom. . . All I have are maybes, because I can’t explain what this is–

But I’m sure I knew it when you were lying to me.

*****

*”Emma claims to have an extra-special ability which is being able to tell when someone is lying to her. The show writers have stated this is not a magical ability, which is why it has been failing her in her interactions with Sidney Glass about Regina and Henry; her personal involvement in the situation hampers her ability to detect lies (From the OUAT Wikia). I don’t claim I always catch people in their lies. There are pre-conditions.

Disclaimer: I haven’t got it down to a science, so go educate yourself about investigating further whether a person is lying to you or not. As I’ve said, it took me years to confront one person about one lie. On a related note: I am flawed, too. BUT WHO WANTS TO GET LIED TO?

Because I’m euphoric, sober, and getting a tan

Posted in A Lot on My Plate, Eureka Moments by

Wild and free; hasn’t been in a while

I smell the newspaper of my youth. Whenever I say/use ‘euphoric’ I’m transported back to the 2000s, in the column of my comparative lit professor where he’d play the in-joke with his equally famous writer-friend, ‘Krip, are you back from Euphoria?’ Whenever I admit to this emotion I actually feel being transported to the state of Euphoria, a place.

It does smell of newspaper, freshly printed words, and hot cement walls; in the background are distant birds chirping and the occasional vehicles cruising by. Beneath my chest wall I can’t feel my heart beat. It is quietly suspended in the late afternoon air, the unbearable lightness of being.

*****

One year and six months of depression does this to you. Something like Tim Burton’s ‘Maybe I’d been clinically depressed and didn’t know it at the time.’ Mine could be defined as the lack of energy to socialize, workaholism, utter selfishness, and abuse on the body all bottled up in my tiny, bony frame. I had attributed it to quarterlife crisis for late-bloomers. But, quite recently, I watched happythankyoumoreplease one day and started to be fine: letting go of my flexible cynicism and allowing the universe to love on me. Pursue happyness and radiate life. Wisdom crap, as one friend would say. But I’m not wasting my time with other kinds of crap.

One year and six months after–

All that has led me to this state of euphoria. To the twentysomething who’s finally heeding Steve Jobs’ sound advice, living like I’m dying. Everyday since I turned 25 I’ve been having this monologue, ‘If I’m dying today, at least I’ve communicated with my family and closest friends. I’ll die satisfied. Nothing important has been amiss.’ Or ‘This could be the day I bump into him!’ (Yeah, this could be quarterlife crisis.)

Beneath all the Facebook status updates, tweets, texts, emails, and occasional blog posts, I am happy without a doubt. I need not end up somewhere in Mexico to find my peace of mind. Borrowing words from Dexter Mayhew, it’s like everyone has a central dilemma in their life, and mine was can I be in committed, mature, loving adult relationships and still criticize or ignore the people surrounding me? The answer is I can’t. Once you’ve worked that out, it all gets a bit simpler.

*****

I am in Euphoria. Some may find it surreal to be staying in such a place for extended periods, so they go back to their old routines, eventually to their old lives. I say, with a few tweaks in our thinking, we can live beyond that. Just as Harvey Specter illustrates.

#BecauseWeCan

I guess this state creates more time, energy, and mental space for things that I’ve been wanting to prioritize since one year and six months ago– relationships, work, travel, finances, the grown-up stuff. I’ve read once that my generation has been in this constant struggle to postpone adulthood partly because we don’t have cities to rebuild, food to manufacture, or fields to grow again after a war. But we have lives to build, souls to feed, and minds to grow. This is our brand of war. I know I sound preachy, but what the hell.

PS Once I wrote about going places with two of my closest friends, Ed and Mia. There will be no more wasted plane tickets in my book this year, and even in the next. One more week and I’m getting a tan somewhere near here.

This is just PMS or QLC: All a myth to me

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Cats have nine lives and none of the crisis.

Quarter-lifers wearing high-fashion yet with the street-smarts — in movies — were my sorority mothers to adulthood. Like, “hey, when I grow up am working for a Miranda Priestly and become a woman of the world.” I was 19 or 20. Not a million existential questions were cramped in my brain yet; but by 23 I’ve decided to ditch the mental self-interrogation as well.

The questions have not stricken back by far, but may be only biding their time in my amygdala, where recent experiences are processed into long-term memories. So I’m expecting them any minute now.

“Epiphanies are hard to come by,” my favorite Bianca Consunji essay once said. I’m expecting but not expecting. So any minute now could mean any minute from now until I die; and I know you’re getting the feeling I’m channeling Gabriel Garcia Marquez on crack but failing, because I really sound like my obnoxious self . . . on crack. It’s because, at 25, I haven’t got a shot at Andy Sach’s life. Worse, I’m writing more stream-of-consciousness posts than ever. High time for the haunting by the existential questions, from which I haven’t heard anything yet. It’s been two minutes.

Must get back to browsing The Sartorialist, Etsy, Anthropologie, the groupons for IKEA imports chance-upon, Thought Catalog, IMDB just in case I play any derivatives of “Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon,” The Oatmeal, etc. All my sorority sisters. Epicurious reads too grown-up for me. The high-fashion pages, too pretentious. 9Gag and Tumblr, too kitschy. At 25, I wonder if I’ve grown so little, now shopping with my own money. But that’s that. I’m not even sure I still want a caramel macchiato in tow as I run pell-mell on a revolving glass door in an NY high-rise, where a caffeine-deprived Miranda Priestly waits for me.