Paradise Philippines

again.

just letting you guys know. mmmwaa!

"and the girl sat on a footstool and slid her foot into the sparkling crystalline slipper that sat waiting in front of her.

she was hoping very much that it would fit, but it was half an inch to small. she squished her toes and tried to make her foot smaller, but it would not go all the way in.

"your shoes are too little," she said, a little disappointed.

"i'm not your princess after all."

and the boy, who was watching her all the time, wiped the cinders from her cheeks. he looked into her eyes, and gave a little laugh.

"but you are," he said.

happy, happy 22nd birthday to the one who makes me feel like i'm his princess, with my big feet and cinder face and all.

i love you.

a great aunt died last november 1. i don't know her very well, and the little that i know about her are not all good things. and yet it's always sad when someone dies. no matter how little you know about that person.

her death made me think of a few things that i've never really thought about before. like, when people cry for someone, do they cry because it really hurts them, or because they think they should?

or why do people pray a lot for those who are remembered good and nice, when those who have hurt a lot of people needs it more?

it bothers me to think that my great aunt died conscious, without even the numbness of a comatose to take away her pain. i think of how much she must have suffered till the very end, and this thought has kept me up for hours for a few days now.

i think of how i would feel if it had been me, with the people i love crying and i can't do anything to comfort them any more.

i don't really believe in regret. when i die, i want people to come because they really love me and would miss me. not because they think it's the proper thing to do. that they would take the time to come to my wake and my burial not because they are embarassed not to show up, but because they really do want to say one last goodbye.

i realized how old i am when a met with long lost cousins and relatives and i saw that the kids i used to change diapers and carry about are now big enough to carry me.

and the change of username is because of that stalker who just won't quit (all together now--what a loser!). i kind of set it up as a decoy, and it's bound to keep that little prick occupied for a while, at least until her puny brain finally figured it out and tracked me down again.

and i really, really want to set up my own domain name.

meeting up with long lost relatives and friends ad talking about work and stuff made me realize how much i still haven't made the complete transition from "student" to "employee" even with the 7 months worth of work that i had. i know absolutely zilch about taxes and tax refunds and insurance and moonlighting.

work is so much better nowadays. i wake up not feeling like i wanna die, and there are very few times that i actually look forward to it. and yea, now i fully appreciate why Riz said that she enjoyed learning about work before. when you fully understand the concept and the significance, it's hard not to get hooked. i'm rapidly getting addicted, i tell ya. if i had my own computer at home, i swear i will be even more of a geek than i am now and be so addicted to work.

now, spiders mean more than that freaky hairy insect, and just thinking about this side of the internet that i never knew about before made me go "tangna! ang internet, malaki pa sa earth!" in my mind while the speakers discussed their fields during the two-day seminar that we just had. it's kinda like planting a tree. it doesn't grow overnight, but you have to work on it, to think about strategies, and all that. i swear, it gave me a whole new perspective on the need to spam. hehehe.

i've got a few things, a few projects that i want to accomplish. maybe in 1 or 2 years, one of them just might actually get going.

ah, my daddy. if he isn't the sweetest guy in the world, i don't kno who is. i love the way we handle each other's quirks so much better now. and since i'm not the kind of writer who has a (romantic) way with words, i just express them in other ways. like pictures, for instance.

if any of you had been wondering what that "awk, awk, awk" thing we keep on saying, look at that picture babe. during one of our dates, we came upon a book about that award-winning film, March of the Penguins, which we read inside Powerbooks (hehe). i think some of my freakish love for animals must've rubbed off on him, because he was just as charmed at those cutie little monogamous creatures whose existense depend entirely upon each other. should one of them fail to return to their mates, that penguin and their chick will die. i love that book. so yeah you guys, just in case you're wondering what i want for christmas.. i'll take a pirated vcd version. hehehehe.

so yeah, it might be corny and mushy and silly and every other synonym you can think of, but we like to think that we are penguins who could not survive without the other. hence that "awk awk awk". it's kind of silly, but i like it and it makes me smile.

watch that movie! it's really, really cute.

PS. the movie is from the makers of The Science of Sleep.

Okay, I know Gilmore Girls season 7 is not yet aired here (or is it?) in the Philippines, but I found this great site that has entire episodes of them, so I have to give due warning that there are MAJOR SPOILERS in here. don't say i didn't warn ya.

[pre-school teacher voice] boys and girls, today we shall see what happens to a person when he or she is too emotionally involved in a TV show. [/end teacher]

Gilmore Girls season 7's first few episodes are really, really breaking my heart. if you are a Luke-Lorelai superfan like i am, you would probably feel the same way.

In season 7, the aftermath of Lorelai's rejected ultimatum to Luke (the one where she demanded that they elope) proved to be the downfall of their uber-romantic couplehood. Lorelai then turned to Christopher for comfort (booty call, sheltered babes), and of course Luke was so mad that he went to Chris' apartment, punched him, then walked out without a word. they just decided to break up after that. Luke was babling on and on about how Lorelai belongs to someone like Chris and that they shouldn't fight it anymore.

Anyway, a few episodes later, Lorelai and Chris, whose relationship seems to be thriving, got married in Paris. After they got back, April (Luke's daughter) got sick (appendicitis) and of course Luke, who knows nothing about kids and illnesses and stuff, panicked and like they've done for years, he called Lorelai to ask for help.

Lorelai then came to visit in the hospital, where they talked for a while. here are some screen caps:

and it was just, soo heartbreaking. Luke and Lorelai were soo perfect for each other.

but then again, maybe that was the problem.

my favorite scene between Luke and Lorelai is this:

LORELAI: Hey, do you remember the first time we met?
LUKE: What?
LORELAI: I'm just trying to remember the first time we met. It must have been at Luke's, right?
LUKE: [nods] It was at Luke's, it was at lunch, it was a very busy day, the place was packed, and this person -
LORELAI: [gasps] Ooh, is it me? Is it me?
LUKE: This person comes tearing into the place in a caffeine frenzy.
LORELAI: [gleeful] Ooh, it's me.
LUKE: I was with a customer. She interrupts me, wild-eyed, begging for coffee, so I tell her to wait her turn. Then she starts following me around, talking a mile a minute, saying God knows what. So finally I turn to her, and I tell her she's being annoying -- sit down, shut up, I'll get to her when I get to her.
LORELAI: Y'know, I bet she took that very well, 'cause she sounds just delightful.
LUKE: She asked me what my birthday was. I wouldn't tell her. She wouldn't stop talking. I gave in. I told her my birthday. Then she opened up the newspaper to the horoscope page, wrote something down, tore it out, handed it to me.
LORELAI: [dryly] God, seriously. You wrote the menu, didn't you?
LUKE: So I'm looking at this piece of paper in my hand, and under "Scorpio," she had written, "you will meet an annoying woman today. Give her coffee and she'll go away." I gave her coffee.
LORELAI: [grinning] But she didn't go away.
LUKE: She told me to hold on to that horoscope, put it in my wallet, and carry it around with me - [pulls a small scrap of paper from his wallet and holds it out to Lorelai] one day it would bring me luck.
LORELAI: [teasing] Well, man, I will say anything for a cup of coffee [unfolds the scrap and reads it with new remembrance] Um...I can't believe you kept this. You kept this in your wallet? [sees his serious expression] You kept this in your wallet.
LUKE: Eight years.
LORELAI: [touched] Eight years.

Luke was there for Lorelai for every scrape she ever got herself into, and likewise. Luke has been more of a father to Rory. Luke has been more of a husband to Lorelai. The show has been building up their tandem ever since the show started and they split em up, just like that.

I guess Chris is perfect for Lorelai in his own way. When they told Rory that they got married, she was mad. Lorelai was trying to explain herself, and she said "In some ways it's too fast, and in some ways it isn't".

and the funny thing is, no matter how much i would prefer Luke over Chris, i kinda knew what she meant.

and yeah. it has been 15 wonderful, painful, sweet, romantic months. I'm proud of what we've got. who would've thought that former classmates who couldn't even look at each other would end up theway we did? not perfect, we fight, we hurt each other.

but it's beacuse of all these: the imperfections, the petty quarrels, misunderstanding, that we grow. it was hard, but life has been painfully sweet to us. and the important thing is, we grow, together. together, we grow.