This is Nathan, my friend Bernice’s 2 month old. I am his godmother. Even if the title makes me sound old, I totally cherish the fact that I’m gonna be part of this adorable baby’s life. I could not stop goggling over him at the christening.

And just coz I can’t post just one picture:

I sure hope that when the time comes, my baby will be this cute. 🙂

*this is a photo of my dad’s friends. they’ve been a group since they were 12, thus making it a 40-year friendship and counting. This is my standard of friendship. 🙂

Some people are constant girlfriends, some are constant antagonists. I am a constant friend.

I have been single for most of my life, heck, all my life, up until recent months, and as a side effect, I have had the time and the freedom to fully cultivate my friendships. Not that people in relationships don’t have the time and freedom to be a friend, really, but my pseudo-relationships of my 23 years, have been my friends.

I have been the constant shoulder, the ear, the hand to smack them in the forehead with, and I have always been available, any time, any where when my friends wanted to pick up and talk over a beer, or a coffee, or most likely, a good meal.

Suffice to say there were times I took things too seriously, bemoaning my friends not being available when I was blue, flaking out when I needed an ear. True, when things really mattered, they were there. But to say my friends are in and out of my life on a constant basis is not an exaggeration, but a statement of fact. There are days when suddenly I get texts of wanting to meet in an hour, or sudden houseguests for when i arrive home on a Sunday after church. I love that. I truly believe in the adage “True friends pick up where they left off, no matter how long they’ve been apart or far the distance”.

But singularity and being the token “dependable” wore me down sometimes. I mourned when the friendships I truly wanted to work out didn’t. I desperately tried to fix utterly destroyed ones, only to have other people ask what the point was. And i truly didn’t know, except that I knew I would miss them and still do. Anger got the best of me at times and I lashed out and gave up on others, after months of thinking it over and experiencing just grief and emotional upheaval every time I talked to them.

As hard as I may want to just don’t care about the people that have left, whether in high drama or just quietly, I still get a tug inside when I see them. I have even suppressed their updates on Facebook, as it pains me to see how happy they are going about their lives, even with those I considered near and dear, I’m just the one who’s not there anymore. Juvenile as it seems, part of me still can’t believe how I bent over backward, killed myself over my friendships, to the degree where I could be seen as a complete martyr. But that’s just me.

Have I changed? I guess a little. I’m not as readily available that I rush out the door to be there in 30 minutes when someone needs me. I won’t watch a movie 3 times with 3 different groups coz I have all the free time in the world (Sigh, of all the movies in the world Transformers 2, I still can’t get over with).  I still will find the time to meet them at my earliest convenient time, or talk over the phone/ym/email. I won’t text “You suck I haven’t seen you in forever” but expect a few once in a while if it’s true. I may not reply in 5 minutes, but I will, and even ask to meet if a friend needs a shoulder or an ear. I won’t try to fix up a friend from one group with a friend from the other (i think we can all heave a sigh of relief about that part). I won’t keep trying to fit in people in my life that don’t want a part of it, and wish them luck on their own lives. Everyone will be happier, I won’t have to be awkwardly saying hi, they don’t have to respond.

As someone told me once, “Why not let it be the other way around? Let them bend over backwards to be your friend and not break yours?” It may sound selfish but hey, a friendship is a relationship is too, and it’s a two-way street. If you’re abandoned, don’t run after them, let them find their way back to you. Try not to hold grudges.

I <3 my friends. They are the weirdest collection of people and I cannot thoroughly explain how we connected. I pick up the strangest connections and the most unique groups. They’re the hardest people to find when you need them, but show up in the best times. I see a few of them everyday, some once in a decade, but I love them equally and miss them all the same.

I am a girlfriend now my friends, but I’m still a friend who won’t forget you. No matter what happens.

I picked these up at the Saizen Japanese store in Galleria. They are the cutest things ever ever ever. Ever. I got the stuffed food thingies, just coz I wanted to ask people “You hungry?” and offer them one. (Which I’ve done to almost everyone) And I’ve squished and almost nibbled when bored.

Since they are kept in my bag now and my perfume bottle keeps uncapping itself they now smell like me too.

Winner explosion of cute.

Can’t wait to bring ’em over the new office.

Destruction, hunger, murder and a million other things. Proven to get any other person down any given day.

Read your newspaper and guaranteed there is one thing on there that’ll ruin your morning.

The choices people make to lie, cheat, steal, kill, ravage and destroy the beauty and goodness that is out there is unbelievable.

But we have to look up, see the sun that burns our skin and feel the warmth that it gives us when we’re chilly in the morning.

The sky that we prod for rain when it’s dry, so breathtakingly blue with a smattering of clouds.

Nature, the same thing we’re killing with our bulldozers and pesticides, the same thing we long for when we see gray buildings and walk on concrete.

To feel dewy grass and smell the salt in the air when we’re near the ocean.

I pray the generations would get to see.

Not in photographs and paintings, but to really feel what it’s like to just be where the sky is blue and the water cool, as it was when we were kids and we didn’t need anything but the street to play patintero in.

No PSPs, or DS lites needed for a road trip, just pointing out things on the horizon like an oddly shaped mountain or all those ducks in the rice field.

I sound like a hippie don’t i?

It’s just, there is so much beauty in the world, and I hope we all still get to see it before it washes away.

Oh Kulfi, you were so strangely good.

And I had you all to myself coz you were weird.

Pistachios and rose syrup, purrfect.

What a way to cool off.

No I’m not doing an ad for Starbucks, I just want a cold drink, and these really looked good to me when i was looking through pictures. It’s far too freaking hot for a toffee nut latte, but can you imagine a toffee nut frap right about now? With this sweltering heat that doesn’t go away even at night, I just feel like drinking everything iced and sticking to places with AC.

Or maybe go to the beach.

Oh the beach. How I miss you.

But I would settle for IVs of these or those banana smoothies Ria made last night. Man those were good. With vanilla ice cream, heavenly.

Cold drinks, the savior of the masses.

Starbucks, save your masses with free drinks kay?

I don’t know who you are yet. I am not leaning toward the orange, the yellow, the red, the green, no not yet. I am a voter though and I will be casting mine on Monday, definitely. Who it is, who the final tallies will show, I just ask for a few things.

Please junk the JPEPA. I do not need toxic waste from Japan here. (Sushi definitely, otoro heck yeah, but toxic waste, no)

Please take care of our journalists. I am not one, but I have always admired them.  I would like to think that we are a free country where people’s voices can be heard. When journalists keep ending up dead, those people who just report on what’s happening and not really expressing their opinions, what hope is there for us civilians who want to share their two cents?

Please share the wealth. I know you’re gonna have access to a lot, and i figure, raising minimum wage for people who break their backs for P300+ a day, a couple hundred would mean the world.

Please give the RH bill a chance. I am not pro-abortion or anything to that extreme, but a few pills here and there, condoms for those who cannot afford them and keep having kids, won’t kill them, hunger will. I am anti-kids dying of hunger. A little education about how to not have them everytime they get the urge to boff would be good. Coz heck, you and I both know, you are not getting them to stop doing it. Have you tried searching for “cytotec philippines” on Google lately? They’re gonna do it, and education about the basic stuff will stop them from even considering the killing of a baby. (Thank you Women’s HealthCare Foundation for doing your part on disseminating information where you can)

That’s it. Much luck on the 6 years. Do us proud.

Spent Sunday indulging my inner kid while trying to keep cool with 2 serial killers, a mad drifter, a mini basketball catcher licker, and a paintball to the crotch victim, and we had a blast.

It was dehydrating, sweltering hot, incredibly wet, exceedingly dusty, but we felt like kids just going around the park looking for the next thrill ride.

Tried Zorbs and felt like hamsters.

Karted.

Bungeed.

Drank half the park’s gatorade.

Learned magic.

Won a mini basketball toy and conceived a drinking game.

Went home after the fireworks (Damn those were nice) and laughed at episodes of Friends.

What a weekend. 😀

I have never been a gamer. I work with computers for a living, to me relaxation has never been a computer screen and I am usually the farthest from one after I shut off my screen at the end of a workweek.

Then I got introduced to Left 4 Dead 2, this kill the zombie cooperative game. I didn’t wanna play it to be honest. (I am the biggest scaredy cat in the world. Signs [that lame alien movie with Mel Gibson] had me store water bottles next to my bed for a year. I avoid commercials during Halloween season and I don’t even watch psychological thrillers. Resident Evil 2 i remember not playing, but just looking at my cousin trying to finish it and having to run to my room from the bathroom at night for months afterward.) I knew i would get nightmares afterward. But since I already saw what was going on, I figured doing something about it would be better than just staring in horror at someone else’s screen.

I did get nightmares. Haha. I envisioned how I would defend myself if i ran into a zombie on the way to my room from the bathroom, or from our gate to the house, and held out my balisong (Yeah how cliche a Batanguena with a balisong) each time. I knew right then I had to finish this game to have closure over the thing and not have visions of my character’s dead body with the screen flashing “You are dead” on the screen. It has become an obsession really, that even if i know I’m gonna have a hard time sleeping at night with the witch crying in the background in my head.

But I suck at it to be honest. My hand eye coordination is nothing to be proud of, and I have no strategy. I pick the guns with the most ammo that can be carried, and I’m too slow to help anyone confined by Hunters or Jockeys. But hey if i have a chainsaw I’ll be the first one to chase after a tank, just coz I like seeing them die. This isn’t the best idea but it just feels so exhilirating to kill that huge thing. And when we play versus and I’m one of those infected thingies, I get killed first. I may not be the greatest player, but I’m one of the most enthusiastic. 🙂

I have to get this outta my system, it’s making me nuts. But hey, at least I know what to do in a zombie apocalypse. Stay the frak away from the friking witch.

So I turned (gasp i can’t even say it) 20something last Tuesday and it was a blast.

The past few days were a blast.

I was actually dreading turning almost mid-20s but hey it was low-key and definitely emotionally filling. I just wanted to hug everyone around me.

Thanks you guys. *BIG HUG*