pusong mamon

i'm tired. what a long day. i finally got to watch the Excorcism of Emily Rose. i liked it, really. nevermind if it's not really based on a true story. i like it still.

i realized just tonight how i am so sensitive. i mean i cry A LOT. i cry EASILY. i cry when i'm too happy. i cry when i'm too sad. i cry over other people's woes. i get sad over other people's problems. i feel what people feel-- like i have this ability to feel what they're feeling right at the very moment when they begin to feel it. i don't know if being over-sensitive it good. it kills me, you know because my heart gets broken easily when i see people suffering (hypocrisy aside), when people are sad, or when people are bothered by something and i can't help them. it's like a burden to me.

there was this one time when i was watching the history of the Olympics on Discovery Channel. while i was talking to Mitchie about it, i cried. not cry as in bawl but cry as in tears filled my eyes. then just this weekend there was the openning of the SEA Games that we are hosting. i choked back tears when i watched the opening because it's... i don't know... magical, i guess? to have that much countries set aside their differences to get together for one event. that alone is amazing.

there was one time when i cried over Columbine's martyr, Rachel Scott. my friend had a book-- the published journal of Rachel entitled Rachel Smiles. and her journal entries made me cry, her life, and the thought of high school students being shot to dead was too horrible to bear.

then there was a time when i cried one morning in high school. in my school in Abu Dhabi, each time a student celebrates his/her birthday, she/he goes up the stage while the ENTIRE school sings the birthday song in Arabic. so there was this little kid from kindergarten, Patrick. Jane, Jern, Raiza, and i liked pinching little Patrick's cheek, by the way. so it was his birthday that morning and when the entire school started singing the birthday song for him, his mouth formed an inverted smile and started to cry. he slowly started crying and i cried by just WATCHING him cry. it was so weird but then again, nothing's weird when you get used to it.

so yeah. the list goes on. ask around. i cry easily. when i tell stories, i cry. grr. it's like my eyes are uncontrollable faucets ready to be turned on anytime. i don't even think it is ever turned off.

a friend of my parents said that being sensitive is a gift for me because i am able to feel what others are feeling. i am sensitive to what they feel, therefore i become less selfish. i'd like to think that and maybe someday i can put this gift into good use. maybe i will be motivated by what's happening around me-- to act on that and reap good results by my doing so. besides, i have long ago accepted that one of my missions in life is to make as many souls as happy as i can. so being sensitive must be good, right?

“For whatever reason, God has blessed me with the ability, put me in a position to make these leaps and bounds. I'm fulfilling my part of the bargain, which is to give back and be a positive influence on others.” -Denzel Washington

i knew i picked the right crush! HAHA! but you know, i am fully aware that we all can't be saints (He knows i'm no saint). however, we are all given chances to be positive influences on others and to be the best person we can be. be not afraid because even if we fail, in the end we can say "at least we gave it a try."

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

One day at a time

"One day at a time."

i was reading Leng's LJ when i read that. for a time now i have been following that philosophy. One day at a time, indeed.

for the longest time i have lived my life carefully planned out. i knew what i wanted to do, what my goals were, and planned ways to get there. most of the time i got what i wanted, succeeded, and people patted me on the back for doing a job well done. but reality has its own way of catching up with me. it reminded me that one can't always win and there are times when you have to work doubley hard to get what you are aiming for.

so life went haywire after that. sometimes i'd worry about things that don't really need to be stressed out too much. i'd worry about the next month, the next year, and even the years after that. i stopped and thought about how fast i was going and how too "advanced" i was. i needed to take a breather. to slow down and remind myself that i can only take too much of what life's throwing at me.

so one day at a time, i decided. i am slowly going to reach the finish line one step at a time. i don't have to hurry because there is still so much life to live and so many things to appreciate. afterall, we are but wanderers here on earth. ours is a life that is borrowed. it is short and i intend to make it well-lived.

i'm not there yet but i'm sure each day i'm one step closer. and when that happens, i'll let you know how the view is from there.


Forward, always forward...
Onward, always up...
Catching every drop of hope
In my empty cup

--Journey, Lea Salonga

______________

Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) died!!! goodbye, sensei. you were my hero when i was a little girl. :'(

i've been abusing the convenience of Google News lately and since my thesis is on the Assessment of the Republic Act 8504 (aka AIDS Law), i created a news alert for all news with regards to HIV/AIDS. and guess what? my inbox has been bombarded with news on AIDS all over the world. there are soooo many! this just goes to show that it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed by people all over the world.

i want to go to the MTV Staying Alive Music Summit in celebration of World AIDS Day on December 1st. but there's a candle lighting ceremony at Tomas Morato, according to Mrs. Gomez (who was our supervisor last summer for practicum at the SAGIP unit of the Philippine General Hospital). anyone? :)

support the campaign because according to Mahatma Ghandi:


(one of my LJ avatars from an icon community)

avatars for your Livejournal. grab if you support the campaign:


(avatars by me)

sleepy tuesdays

i just had a long ass day. a long ass day for me is 5am-3pm (class from 7am-2.30pm with a three-hour break in between). i can't stress enough how hard it is to wake up at 5am in the morning these days. usually my routine is like this: i wake up, robotically take a shower, get ready for school, and dream of bread (slightly toasted) slathered in creamy peanut butter (only the local Lily's kind, please). then i think about the smell of hot coffee. the taste of coffee drives my mind crazy because it's usually cold these days but on days when i'm in a rush for a 7am class and with my father waiting for me in the car outside, i have no time for breakfast. yes, even for a hot or cold mug of Nesvita to prevent my poor stomach to rumble. when it's December and it's cold in the mornings especially during before sunrise, it gets a triple times harder to wake up and be in school on time. lucky for me i hitch a ride with my dad to school who prods me to get up each morning on days when we go to Manila together because he likes being early in the office for parking. when i get to school, the hallways are eerie. they always give me goosebumps. thanks to the kuyas of PhilCare (the janitorial service), i am comforted that i am not alone. but i wonder why i'm sometimes not afraid. perhaps it's because sometimes i ignore the creepy feeling of the dark hallway and me being the only person on the 3rd floor of Gusaling Andres Bonifacio. Room 304. i'd open the door and as usual, at 6.30am i'd find myself alone. i used to not switch on the lights because i'd like to think it's cozier that way. but after proving how much it makes me more sleepy on early mornings right before 7am, i'd switch them on and plug the earphones of my trusty little green Mini. i try to drown the deafening silence by soundtripping. sometimes i'd review my notes for a quiz we always have for Dr. Boncan's class on American History. then classmates would start coming in and it's safe to come back to the world again. i'd pull the earphones off and start chatting away.

i never thought i'd say this but it looks like i'm going to miss my lonely and sleepy 7am class because it was moved to 10am now. rawr. just as i was about to appreciate sleepy mornings, they change the sked. oh well. no more rides with my father, though.

so now i'm very sleepy. i know that when i sleep this headache off i know i'll wake up about 4 hours later. i sleep like a baby when i wake up early in the morning. it's as if an invisible thread keeps the eyelids closed no matter how much you want to open your eyes and wake up already. when that happens, i usually give myself an imaginary kick but usually i sleep another few hours more. afterall, it is the weekend.

on the way home from school today i had a lot of thoughts inside my mind that i wanted to write about. thoughts that are not just this-is-what-i-did-today thoughts. they may actually be profound but then it happened again -- that feeling when some thoughts were meaningful and actually made sense while they were inside your head and when you write them down you end up not stressing out your point strong enough. sometimes they come out okay but only convey as much as half of what you want to actually say. i'm not even sure you understand but if you get the picture, i congratulate myself. i'm not talking gibberish. so yeah, now i'm going to keep them inside my head for a while.

oh, i just finished downloading Google Earth. it rocks! :)

quick updates because i'm lazy

i finally saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last Saturday. my friends and i braved the throng of shopping people who came that night to glorietta. i didn't know there was a midnight sale. i hate crowds and long lines with a passion but what can i say? for Harry Potter, i can endure anything! lining up just to get into the theater (because we ran out of sure seats) for more than an hour was just ridiculous. but if it's Harry Potter it justifies the madness. i enjoyed the movie but was quite disappointed when they omitted the openning of the Quidditch World Cup. i was looking forward to see the veelas dancing. they're supposed to be enchanting with their graceful moves, right? and the little house elf of Barty Crouch (her name was Dinky, i think) wasn't there and Percy's sucking up to Barty Crouch wasn't included in the movie. pshaw. but it's okay, i guess. they took off the unimportant parts to make way for the more important scenes because the movie was already three hours long. it was also quite disappointing when the cuts were very obvious (or was it just me?). but in general, the movie rocked! Daniel Radcliff is HOT! i love the part when he took a bath at the prefect's bathroom. Moaning Myrtle was adorable and the girls from Beauxbaton were all pretty just like how i imagined they would be while reading the book. Fleur was pretty, Hermione too! victor krum was too buff but his muscles appear to be larger than his brain. HEEH. but everyone i know has a crush on him except me because i think Harry Potter was still HOT in the movie and Cedric too!!! i wish they showed Cedric taking a bath too. HAHAHA! *evil laugh*

anyway... enough about Harry Potter. all i know is that i got motivated to continue reading The Order of Phoenix again so i can finally proceed to The Half Blood Prince (nevermind if one of the parts got spoiled because someone told me. grrrr.).

i've been going out a lot lately. over the weekend my father, sister, and i went to the World Trade Center because my father had tickets for the International Bazaar. we didn't buy anything because there weren't anything good there anyway. the bazaar brought back memories of way back when we used to live in Myanmar. i went to countless International Bazaars and mostly bought food because Indonesian, Malaysian, and Indian food were my thing as a little girl. plus, my mother had a lot of friends and they used to give me their products for free. the Russian booth was my favorite because they sold really good Eclairs and cream puffs. every year we went to these bazaars and always got lucky winning something from the raffle draw. at the Australian Embassy bazaar, my father won a trip to Sydney for two but he never went. in this bazaar, i always looked forward for the bake sales because they sell yummy cakes and cookies! at the Korean Embassy bazaar, i bought a box of mechanical pencils (HAHA!), the ones with cute Korean character prints on them and is only about 2 inches long. it was so unique that my mother bought me a box.

yesterday, i braved the streets of Divisoria with alej and his friends to buy some Christmas decors. i had fun, though. bargain shopping is always fun because who doesn't love bargain goods? but the "jungle" that is Divisoria was hustling and bustling with activity. people were squishing and pushing and stepping on each other's foot that it got harder to breathe by the minute. the Christmas decorations were lovely. there were poinsettias here and there, Christmas trees, tree ornaments, sinamay, and tinsel paper everywhere. you could actually feel the spirit of Christmas if it weren't for the annoying crowd pushing and shoving. after running errands, i finally got home. i was tired and my body ached but i still had to study for a quiz in American History (Area Studies 167). this morning i woke up at 5am for my 7am class. now i'm home. tired. sleepy. blah.

so it's almost Christmas. i'm thinking of using my coin box as a "Christmas Fund" container so i can save for a little Christmas shopping. i want to do something special this year for me to feel the joy of Christmas. we all know the joy of Christmas is felt in the joy of giving and i feel like giving this year. i want to bake brownies and cookies too!!! happy happy! joy joy! :)

okay must go now. i'm waiting for a phone call. *yawn* i'm sleepyyyy.

PHOTOS! your browser will DIE

it was my sister's birthday yesterday. we had dinner at Tong Yang with my father, Alej and kuya John then coffee at Starbucks (just the four of us, though). Peppermint Mocha Frapp. YUM!

lotsa peekchurs from last night...

and more...


alej, me, my sister and kuya john. hyperrrr!


sistorrsss :)


my sister and her boyfriend.


my bodyguards.

i slept at around 3am and woke up at 4am. rawr. imagine the stress, MAN! it was horrible trying to get up. it rained and rained. the sun wasn't up yet. duh, 5.15am. what do you expect? so my father said he'll bring me to school. like all mornings when i go to school with my dad, i was 30 minutes early again. 6.30am i was alone in the eerie classroom at GAB. one hour later my classmates started to arrive. at least a few of them. we gave up waiting for Prof Betan so we went to the cafeteria instead. i needed a large cup of iced coffee to perk me up (did not work). bought school things and then van and i paid for our tuition.

and then something really funny happened. we were supposed to eat lunch at Rob but after going to the NEDA building for tuition... we walked automatically back to school. then apple asked what we were doing back at CAS when we were supposed to eat at the mall. HAHA! turned out that we were all following each other. ngek. labo, pare. after lunch we got the grad pics (heavyyyy ng frame!).

tapos kanina sa school, na-bore kami. may vacant kasi kami na 3 hours. tumambay nalang kami sa Oblation Garden, dun sa favorite stone table ko overlooking Padre Faura Street. tapos nag peekchur peekchur. eto lumabas...

Oblation Garden. hanapin si Oblation Statue, a.k.a. "Oble".


OO! kailangan namin ng stress tabs! pinagtatawanan namin 'tong picture na 'to kasi ang lalaki ng eyebags namin! HAHA! mga LOLA na kami!!!


si Apple tumawa ng tumawa...


tapos nag-emote...

1pm umakyat na kami kasi klase naman kay Prof Roli.


si paulo na conscious. wala na kasi bigote. HEHE!


nainggit ako sa peekchur nila. sumingit ako.


si Mitchie at Iesel kinareer ang Econ nila. HEHE!


si paolo m. na carried away sa kwento niya...


chez's mysterious effex.


bea's camera friendliness :)

tapos nag usap para sa monito-monita ng block :) heeh! fun! pero dumating si Prof Roli kaya naputol ang plano.

oh, yeah. YAYNESS! Indayog picked me to design their posters and tickets for the 2nd Sayaw, Manila! (dance concert). whee! and i can contribute to Manila Collegian's Waywaya (literary folio) because i used to be a writer for the school paper. i'm thinking of submitting photos that i took of Intramuros in junior year. i want to submit writings too but i'll have to see about that because i don't think anything i have is worth submitting.

ayun lang. HAHA! nag meeting sa org tambayan after class. project head ako ng exhibit two weeks from now. YIKES.

okay baboo. sorry i killed your browsers.

website update unsuccessful

updating a lay-out is hell especially uploading it to a server via ftp to gail.mess-up.org. my back hurts from sitting on the bed without anything to lean on. argh. i've been slouching and working like a mad doctor/obsessive compulsive computer geek for hours now tinkering on the layout. i worked on it after i arrived home from church and ate dinner. everything's already set, contents and all but the publishing is taking a lot more effort than i usually exert. i initially wanted to switch from Blogger to Wordpress but setting it up will take more time than i thought it would. so maybe i'll do that next time.

soon you'll have to visit http://gail.mess-up.org instead of this URL. if you have me linked, it's okay. you don't have to edit my link (although it would be better if you would) because i'll add an automatic URL redirection anyway.

oh well. i'll try again later.

observations and whatnots

i stayed up all night trying to figure out how to amuse myself. i also helped a friend sign up for a Livejournal account and set it up with background and all. i realized how much of a geek i am when my friends or just people i know run to me and ask how to set up their blogs or what codes to use when they want blah blah blahs on their blogs. but i love helping out (yeah, so if you need help with yours... i'll help you!) and it makes me happy teaching people about things i know.

then i spent hours chatting on YM with this same friend. you know, having a lot of guy friends and girl friends helped me see how guys and girls are different. i've talked with mostly all of them about the most trivial things and the more serious of conversations. i realized that

1. when girls have problems, they tend to dramatize (okay, i refuse to use the word "exaggerate" because i'm a girl too and i'm guilty of that) a lot about their situation. guys, on the otherhand, go straight to the point. meaning, they'll say "this is what's wrong...". they acknowledge the problem and deal with it so fast. it's not that they don't care. they just don't dramatize too much or whine about things that can no longer be changed! girls tend to wallow in self-pity for a LONG period of time before finally accepting the situation.

2. girls are good at voicing out or expressing what they feel when they're in a rut. guys, on the otherhand, hesitate to tell that they have problems because they feel like it's not too "macho" to show their weak side and they feel like they can work things out by themselves.

3. when girls give out advice, they usually go round and round and not go straight to the point. when you ask a guy for advice, WHAM! they'll hit you (figuratively, of course) with reality on the face. this is the situation. deal with it. this is what you do. they give solutions right away. girls do give sound advice and resolutions but sometimes, well, we tend to rant and rant and end up with... "it's up to you."

4. when you ask girls what they think, they usually answer with "it really depends on you. what do you want?". when you ask guys what they think, they'll be frank about it.

5. we over analyze too often when sometimes there's nothing more beneath the surface. what you see is what you get.

i'll add to the list but so far, these are my observations. so that makes me a lucky duck to have plenty of guy friends and girl friends. i get to have the best of both worlds. HAHA! don't get me wrong, of course, i love my girl friends. they're the best! but we have to admit, girls. sometimes we're drama queens. i don't know, maybe it's in our nature to be fragile and emotional all the time. we tend to over analyze a lot.

anyway, so much for that. i decided to change the layout again (yes, go ahead and roll your eyes). but this time, i'm not the one who designed it. credit goes to Becarry who gives out free templates for blogger. i was just too lazy to start from scratch all over again and i need the change because i want something brighter that's cool for the eyes. i just hate it when i use templates that i didn't design because it's a different feeling when you yourself create templates. oh well. this is temporary. i hope.

i'm going to get my glasses tonight (hurray! no more blind gail!). i'm near-sighted, you see. i have bad eyesight since i was 10 years old but it has gotten a lot worse from correctional to astigmatism to nearsighted AND astigmatism. i don't wear my glasses all the time, though. just when i'm in class (because i cannot see what's written on the white board and i hate pestering seatmates to dictate the lesson). i should wear them more often than i used to because 1.) i end up losing them 2.) misplacing them and of course, 3.) worsening my eyesight. i don't want to use contact lenses because i'm not up for taking them on and off, cleaning them, then wearing them again in the morning. it's just too much for me. i opt for spectacles so i might as well discipline myself to wear them more often because i've been squinting more often these days and i think my headaches aren't migraine attacks anymore. they're my eyes screaming "WEAR GLASSES AND HELP US SEE!". and then i'm going to have dinner with my father (my sister is still in Baguio unti Saturday, that lucky duck).

my glorious days of bumming around watching tv shows like House, Medical Investigation, C.S.I., Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, Married to the Kellys, Wonderfalls, Worlds Apart, The Practice, and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. have ended. oh, and lets not forget the death of my reigning days as the Couch Queen. i bid farewell to sembreak, hello school.

have a great afternoon!

for movie buffs, play enthusiasts, and bibliophiles

they're making a movie out of the book The Devil Wears Prada and of the two plays Oliver Twist and Rent.

Memoirs of a Geisha is showing soon, The Da Vinci Code too.

am i supposed to look forward to these or are they going to be a huge disappointment again just like other novels-turned-movies? it's so annoying when the movies omit parts of the novel or "modify" the novel completely.

hehe. just thinking out loud. then again, it can be something i could look forward to so that i can actually see for myself whether it's good or not.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the 16th and Chronicles of Narnia in December. can't wait!

boredom kills

gail is suffering from writer's block. it has been days now. she keeps checking her blog and tells herself "i want to blog today!". when she opens w.bloggar thinking she has an idea of what to write about, she finds herself staring at the text area racking her (somewhat dead) brain cells for ideas. "write about what you know", they said. ahhh. that's the problem! too many random thoughts inside her head she couldn't even put them into words. pshaw.

- - -

on the otherhand, my sister and i have been hanging out with my father a lot. we do the grocery shopping together and go with him to the gym (he works out and my sister and i hang out at Figaro). it's about time my father excercised. he's not getting any younger and he seemed to have noticed that he has been experiencing shortness of breath. so, he opted to live healthier because he wants to grow old.

i said i'd stay away from coffee right? so far so good. i only had Vanilla Frost the other day. for two hours we waited for our father to pick us up. at some point we thought he forgot about us because he took so long a time to get there (hehe). my sister wants to go again tonight after dinner. i'm still thinking about it because when i stay at home for days i develop a certain kind of laziness that drags my energy down and all i want to do is stay home all day.

- - -

i already have a design for my website. yesterday i tinkered with Photoshop in hopes of coming up with something worth publishing on gail.mess-up.org but came up with NOTHING. not being able to come up with designs is as bad as getting a writer's block when you badly feel the need (or want) to write. but so far so good. i just need to think of what to put on the website aside from the blog. ho-hum.

- - -

last night i was not in the mood because i missed Alej. i told him that and we just kept exchanging text messages. he kept asking a lot of questions and then he said i should go out if i didn't want to be sad. of course, i didn't want to go out because that would mean being out in the cold in complete darkness and who knows what i might see outside? so i said i didn't want to. i'd rather stay in bed and watch tv instead. then what do you know? he said he was outside. he surprised me and brought me chocolates (because i was craving last night) and a daisy. (thank you for the midnight sugarush! literally and figuratively, of course). we stayed outside for a few minutes. we were bathed by the lighting from the incandescent lampost and when i looked up the sky it was pretty because the stars came out to play last night.

nevermind the fact that i was already in my pajamas, ratty t-shirt, messy ponytail, and flip flops.

you made me happy. :)

- - -

9:10 PM have you read Angela's Ashes? it had been on the bookshelf for as long as i can remember. i think it was somewhere in sophopmore year when i picked it up at Booksale after rummaging the stacks of books there. i got it for just P150. anyway, the book depresses me. when you think about it, you'd think that it's impossible for a mother to go through that kind of difficult life. but losing three small children simultaneously and living in poverty? that's just too much. on the cover of the book is a picture of little Frank (McCourt) in barefeet. he gives his boyish smile to the camera with his hands inside his pocket. each time i pick up the book and read it, i keep looking at the cover because i always get that urge to reach out into the book cover and squeeze little Frankie's cheeks.

sometimes i want to cheat and skip the middle part of the book to the end just to find out how the McCourt's life turned out.

i'm in the living room right now all cozy on the couch with my pink pajamas. HAHA. i can be a couch potato forever minus the weight gain and zero income, of course. HAHA! okay, i'm joking.

oh! Medical Investigation is on right now. gotta go! aside from C.S.I., i have developed love for the following shows:

1. Desperate Housewives
2. Veronica Mars
3. House
4. Wonder Falls (i think Jaye is pretty!)

hurray for television. it keeps me sane on cold "ber" nights like this.


xoxo,
gail