I remember the first time I heard a song from the play “Wicked”. It was a slow week at work and I was browsing videos at Myspace (it was that long ago) looking for something new to listen to. I caught the song “I’m Not That Girl”, which was basically a song about a girl saying she was ordinary and not the kind of girl that a boy would choose to love.

I listened to that song everyday for hours that week on loop. I even looked for videos of that song being performed. However, I didn’t want to read the synopsis of the play, because I knew in my heart that when I watched it, I wanted to be surprised. I knew some of the songs of course, but the whole story I kept a mystery to myself so when I had an opportunity to watch it I would see it and feel every moment for the first time.

Of course a play like that didn’t stay under the radar for long. Filipinos do go around the world after all, and the lucky ones got to see it on Broadway or the West End stages. I never longed to go to the United States or London, but for this play, I felt a longing to go to places I’ve never been, and urged friends and family in the cities that it was to play in to go watch it. I never really got anyone to watch it of course, the main response I got was “Why would I go watch it without you?” I don’t know if I was happy about that. I did get promises that if I was to go to the United States, friends would take me, promises that filled me with hope that the one play I wanted to watch in my life, I would get to see someday, however faint that hope was. (Which, for the friends who are reading is, I’m still collecting on in the future)

Then came last weekend, when we were sitting down in my seat at the Marina Bay Sands theater looking at the stage set up for the musical I never thought I would watch for at least a decade. The first few notes had me tearing up, and I admit, many of the performances left me touching my handkerchief to my eyes. The Defying Gravity performance left me shaking in my seat. It was, a surreal experience that exceeded every expectation I had. Every note was sung perfectly, all the actors playing their parts to a T. I was surprised at every nuance, every joke, every twist. I was so glad I didn’t read the story and it gave me a better experience for it.

I felt truly touched by the experiences played out on the stage, and while I was never an outcast, I was never “The Girl” too. All my life I’ve been “Normal Girl” and while I know I’ve been lucky, I’ve watched people so much luckier throw their chances away.

And come on, who but 1% of the population can say that they’ve been “The Girl” or “The Boy” of the population’s dreams, and I think this is the appeal of the play. To give the other perspective of people who have been misunderstood, miscast by circumstances and experiences brought to them by a world who’s main objective is the pursuit of beauty. We’ve almost all felt so ugly and unhappy about what we see in the mirror and felt the sting of not being to conform to society’s standards that we felt a little green.

So I guess, all I’m saying is, Gregory Maguire, thank you for writing the book that this play was based on. Thank you Stephen Schwartz for writing music and lyrics that will forever haunt my life. Thank you for the voice that told me look for songs to fill my life that day, and thank you for the person that brought me to see it, even with all the hesitation and doubt of them not liking it.

So let me write about words. Their power to influence, to hurt, to span generations and still be as poignant 100 years later than when they were first put to paper. I guess for a writer in this surplus world of information, making something, anything that will last, even for a moment in someone else’s life is one thing we do want to accomplish at least once in our lives. To move an audience of as little as one  with a phrase, a paragraph, an essay. Of something you’re truly passionate about. Of what moved you today. Of what happened in that particular moment that you just had to record with your own thoughts and share with others. Because in this world, the idea of permanence is fleeting. Even books are becoming an antiquated idea, the printed world giving way to pixels that anyone can easily dismiss with a click.

Why? I can’t even begin to tell you how often I’ve come across something I read that I did want to share with the world. Even if the idea of quoting someone is beginning to be as passe as forwarding a chain letter in someone’s mailbox, the idea that a few words could make someone else feels as I felt when I read it makes it all worthwhile to share. Who knows the power your words hold over people? What would pull on someone randomly reading a piece you’ve penned and making it a point to make sure others read it. I do want to think that the words I experience everyday have made life richer. And if your words can do that to others, then do it.

However uhip or egoistic it is to want to make an impact in the world with what you write, I want to urge people reading this to keep doing it. You may not make money off of it, or be the next frost or yates, you never know. Maybe this piece you wrote today will give you something to look back on and see how your younger self liked to think, or show your children who you were before they were born. Maybe this’ll just be something others use against you when they want to kick you to the ground, using your own words to mock you. It doesn’t matter.

Just write.

If it moves just one person (even if that person is you) for a single moment, it is a mark you left on their being. Maybe it’ll make them change them change their perspective for a second, or maybe it’ll just be something a person laughs at because of its absurdity, but it is, in that moment, significant to themselves.

Write. Because you need to. Because the world needs you to.

I have been waking up insanely early hours for work, and have just only noticed that this sky is what awaits me in the wee hours of the morning. Thank you for reminding me of the beauty of the world in the midst of the madness of reality.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Somehow love sounds better through his words. Happy Tuesday!

The five minute burger.

Food. It’s mostly what I talk to complete strangers about. I bond with new friends by mentioning food stuff, coz hey, it’s my passion. Yes. Food is my passion. I plan my outings on meals, and build whole trips on restaurants. I cook. I (used to) bake.

But mostly I eat. A lot. Even more than the usual guy (ask friends, they’ll tell you, some of them even have specific stories of my tendency to go Epic Mealtime on food). I remember a professor telling us in college that if you spent more than 40% of your salary on meals, then you qualify for the poverty sector, well deal me in.

And the result? A physique that is far from perfect, but happy. Made up of meals of grins and eyes rolling into my head. Dimples in parts unknown due to a longer time at the lunch table at a meal cooked by the expert hands of my mom (or her mom for that matter). Arms that no longer fit into once favorite shirts and legs sometimes cut off circulation with tighter pants. But here is a happy girl who has experienced both the good (uni) and the bad (dry cakeage with food color tasting icing) who will gladly buy looser pants.

Why the emphasis on food, when it’s such a waste of money? Yes, food literally converts to crap and I am aware of that. It is a nothing investment in anything but myself. Simply because I was raised to love it. When my mom used to work, she had a very tight schedule and could only take us out on some weekends, to different places. She bought me my first capuccino and biscotti, fluffy pancakes, scallops and the like. It was an adventure we all took together and it built my childhood. Both sides of my family have an arsenal of great cooks, and relish showing off their skills in the kitchen, and I was not one to refuse something new, or strange. Family outings were composed of us pigging out on home cooked dishes or heading to the mall to eat. I can tell you right now, most of my family thinks that an outing with us all together without a meal is a wasted time. Even two hours together deserves pancit, barbeque, puto and all the other works. And frankly, my grandma gets pissed at the mention of a diet.

Yes I love food. But I think the best meals are the ones you have with people you love. Because I’m sappy like that.

So, a food sojourn yes?

It’s been so long, too long since I’ve had an opportunity to take this photo. All I can say is, it’s about damn time.

I have no finesse.

Bowling, which I rediscovered about a couple of months ago during a work-related outing, is not my sport. Heavy, large balls rolled beautifully down a lane is not something I can do with style. Taking my turn at a lane just shows off what little control I have and my loss of technique.

Take for example the three times I’ve gone bowling before I was told to use my middle and ring finger for better control (I had been using my pointer and the middle, thanks). The tips from well meaning players telling me to try and roll the boll down the lane instead of ceremoniously bouncing it down to hit the pins in (what I suspect is) anger and frustration. The photos that show how incredibly bad form I had compared to the beautiful poses they had without knowing someone was taking pictures.

Not to say I had really bad scores during games. I did fairly well, breaking the 100 mark in my second time bowling in years. I bowled a couple spares. I could hit a few at least with my bounce technique, but bowling with people with actual technique, well, I was in the bottom two.

This is not to say I will stop playing. I will keep at it, but not really learning, as the more I concentrate on winning, the lower my scores get.

And really, isn’t bowling at this point in life really for fun?

Badminton on the other hand, I will be working my butt off to get better at. I just hope I get more opportunities to play.

So here are a few random facts about my childhood with Disney:

• Growing up, I was told I looked like Jasmine from Aladdin and Pocahontas from the movie of the same title. No, it was not lost on me that these were the princesses that were colored. I was darker, umkay?
• I memorized the whole Pocahontas soundtrack when it came out, our mom bought us tapes and the sing along lyrics to the whole thing. To this day I still remember snippets of random songs.
• I really loved Ariel’s red hair from the Little Mermaid, and have a soft spot for redheads up to the present coz of it.
• I dressed up in a genie like costume (that I picked up from Supersale Club with my own money) for my seventh birthday. I liked the blues, greens and purples of the thing.
• I remember one friend for his Lion King lunchbox. I wanted it so much coz it changed colors in the heat.
• I went to the preschool section of our elementary school library to read Minnie Mouse’s adventures.
• My favorite character to color in coloring books is Minnie Mouse, her outfits were always color coordinated for me.
• For so long I wanted a pet tiger like Princess Jasmine’s.
• Snow White is my least favorite princess, her voice was too high, she was too sickly sweet for my taste.

When I do get my own kids in the future, they will find Disney a part of their childhood as I did mine, I hope they love it as much as I do.

For one, I saw my friends for a couple hours last Saturday. Abby, Vinnny, Pao and Kiko, it has been too long, and that lunch was too short. Sausages both consumed and inferred, made me a happy bunny for Saturday lunch. I can’t wait for the decimation of Poco Deli’s supply when we do conquer it.

HMR and its random fun items made me want to buy a stuffed bear bigger than me, it’s a good thing I was setting aside cash for other activities, that would not have fit in our car. Still want one though. Maybe if extra spending money comes along, or an enormously bad day has me running to that American surplus store for fluffy companionship.

Bowling with the fam (and the boyf) and getting high scores with my “bounce” roll. Here’s to winging it and winning it. My bowling arm had me moving to a 10lb. ball, and getting a strike for the first time since I can remember. It also had me with a swollen ring finger for the last few frames, as it got squished between 2 10lb bowling balls in excitement to “dribble”.

Seeing people play badminton got me frustrated I couldn’t play and excited to try it for the first time since high school. I was pretty competitive then, but well, I knew no rules and was only killing shuttlecocks across our school’s basketball court. Must play soon and see if I can still hit those things.

Free ice cream (see previous post)

A golden retriever pup that keeps dribbling dog spit on my pants but looks quite adorable doing so. He’s getting big, and has his moments of “NOOOO” but most of the time just hangs out watching tv being cute. I <3 Ferb!

So here’s hoping the coming weekends will be as good as this one. Hello Universe!

This past week, my view of the world took a beating. Hard truths about human greed smacked me in the face, and the sick, depressing video of a two year old Chinese girl getting run over and ignored by thirteen people really shattered the rose colored glasses I still put on every morning.

Last Sunday, my faith in the world got a little pat in the back.

After mass at UP Diliman, we headed to the shopping center for a light lunch, Rodic’s so the post lunch badminton game wouldn’t have us sluggish and sloshing random food around in our stomachs. I had been craving ice cream for days, longing for (but too lazy to go to) Sebastian’s cookie dough ice cream. I figured I’d soothe my crave monster with a cone from the Fruits in Ice Cream freezer/scooping station in one of the center’s stalls, and get it cheap, with P23 a scoop, I won’t feel gypped and I’d have ice cream in mah belleh.

There was a 40-ish man in line in front of me, buying 2 ice cream cones for him and his son, who was outside the stall. I kept my distance as he had already told off his son to not wander off. I remember he ordered a mango scoop for his son and a strawberry one for himself. Handing the mango one to his son, he repeated his order to the lady who was scooping. He then turned to me and asked “Ano sayo? (What are you getting?)” and I said green tea. I figured he was asking because 1. He was making conversation. 2. He was trying to get the lady to hurry up as she was quite slow. 3. He was the owner and was making the lady go faster for customers. What I didn’t expect was for him to repeat my order to the lady scooping up ice creams, and repeating his order of a strawberry scoop. After the lady handed him my green tea, he said “What a healthy order.” to me, and told the lady that he was paying for my ice cream. He then handed me my ice cream and said “Have a great day.”

Dumbfounded, I said, thank you and shuffled out the stall in shock. It was so random, so nice, and so perfect for the week of harsh truths and crazy news items that I had, that I could only go back to Rodic’s (where the rest of my family was) and tell them about the story.

So Mr. Ice Cream man, thank you. You just made this girl’s Sunday better, and restored her faith in the human race.