i’ve been beating up myself with self-loathing while my insecurities are threatening to swallow me — snot, guts and all. i’ve been horrid to myself, i realized tonight.

but i can’t help it… i just received an email about how badly i’ve been doing. then an editor has been deriding me, for whatever reason.

and i am now asking myself, why am i doing this to myself? working myself to the ground for a pittance of a salary. i’ve given up so much for this job, given all of myself to this thankless job. and what do i get in return?

nothing.

para na akong nauupos na kandila.

a colleague once said (when i was already burning out last year), i should pick my battles and i shouldn’t face all of them at the same time.

now i’ve chosen this battle but it seems like i’m losing.

i just wish that i won’t lose the passion i have for this profession. it’s not just a plain vanilla job for me…it’s a calling. i think i’ll lose a big chunk of my heart if i come to that point that i have to give up because i can’t fight any longer…when i become too tired to fight.

–

it’s friday night, i’m here typing on my asus eee pc, on my sister-in-law’s glass-topped, 8-seater dining table, drinking leftover red wine from my cousin’s visit when we had a dvd marathon. i don’t care if it doesn’t taste as good as it did before…as long as i have alcohol in me tonight i’m fine.

a colleague invited me to her gig somewhere along kalayaan tomorrow night and i’ll probably go if Other Half is going somewhere also that time. i won’t have to work on sunday (thank God!) so i can chase the blues away with hard rock and booze. it’s been a long time since i’ve done that.

on second thought, i’m not fine with the leftover wine. i just finished one glass and gave up. opened a new bottle, listened to skillet on my ipod piping music over a portable speaker and pondered on what i should do.

should i keep on fighting?

ok, i’ll just let the alcohol talk to me.

–

WTF?! this red wine sucks! i twist the bottle so the label faces me…carlo rossi? no wonder. i probably ran out of good red wine last new year. the only decent thing left is the sparkling wine i’m saving for a special occassion. probably when we have visitors.

–

i remember my sisters and i with Other Half downed at least 6 bottles of red wine on new year’s eve 2007 going to 2008 here in our house. we were so drunk that the 4 of us got nightmare hangovers when sunlight crept in to our lives that day.

–

made a tearful phonecall to my older sister and told her i’m burning out. i probably didn’t make sense to her because i was sobbing myself silly. then the line was cut off (great, SMART, just great…you ruined my momentum). i just texted her that i don’t know, i’ll just let batman do the rest for me.

–

ok, i’m finished with the carlo rossi. the bottle is just teeny weeny, enough for two glasses. just right for somebody who’s just looking for an alcohol fix but not too much.

on second thought i would open another bottle. just in case. i have a lot of red wine stashed away here. i dunno how i was able to hoard that much wine but i did. gifts probably last christmas…

i’m on my third glass now and nothing is happening yet…
–

collective soul is singing to me now.

“so i walked up on high
and stepped to the edge
to see the world below
and i laugh at myself
and the tears roll down
cause it’s the world i know
what’s the world i know…”

so apt. so…and it’s making me cry again…

–

jars of clay comes to serenade me

“to love you
take my world apart
to need you
i am on my knees
to love you
take my world apart
to need you
broken on my knees…”

–

i don’t want to open another bottle of red wine…ooh, there’s smirnoff here…i wonder…

–

Other Half’s here. at last, a human being who is not a YM avatar and not just a name on my phone that i can talk to.

–

drunk.

i’m trying. trying so hard. but not enough. i’m tired.
i’m sick and tired. but i plod along.
can i take it?
i don’t know how long i can take it.

i was waiting for him to rip his pants during one of his dance numbers.

bakit ba nung naghasik ng talent ang Diyos, si hugh jackman lahat nakakuha?

was supposed to be “vacationing” or taking a break in elbi this weekend when my boss texted me he can’t come to work on sunday and the whole week due to a family emergency.

i couldn’t do anything but — as a subordinate all you can do is say yes.

i cut my break short and rushed to the office on a sunday afternoon and did what i could do, something that i’ve been doing for the past 2 months.

i realized this road that i have taken would be shorter than what i had in mind earlier. it’s taking over my life completely and i wonder if Other Half is already hating me for it. i’d better find a balance before things can get crazier.

read in yugatech that inquirer.net will be folded under philippine daily inquirer.

when i was still in the IT industry (was a web editor) way back in 2001, i found that inq7.net had the most expensive ad space at that time and i knew it was raking in money (we were trying to get the same ads but then our company and website folded up soon after 9/11).

then there was the split from gma7.

before that happened, i already knew that gma was going to build its own site. i was applying for a job then as an online news writer (but the pay was lower than my old government job so i opted not to pursue it) and when my interviewer was discussing the plans for the site, i had an inkling that the network would eventually bail out on the partnership. i didn’t have the courage to ask them “why would they need their own newswriters when pdi supplies the news content?”

then it happened.

later, i gathered that inquirer.net was a separate company with its own roster of online journalists and bloggers. their income came purely from the revenues the ads generated.

i learned from pdi reporters that whenever their stories were uploaded/used, they were supposed to be paid — separate from what they earn from the paper. but one pdi reporter complained that they don’t get paid and yet their bosses hounded them, demanding breaking news to beat the wires.

and now this…

i’m not surprised that inquirer.net, as a separate entity, will fold up. i already heard that somewhere. and through the grapevine i learned that the online company was bleeding. i think they had too many bloggers and online reporters doing the same news stories as their print counterparts.

but the site will still be there but i guess it will just be like any other philippine newspaper, the online version will just be, well, an online copy of their print version.

and to think that we were egging our company president to make our own website as interactive as inquirer.net…

sad for the online journalists…i guess the company have to let them go.

been really busy with work that it’s already killing me. i really need my own mode of transport now. hailing an FX in quiapo at 10 pm every night is not nice.

i’m in a difficult position right now since i’m halfway between going up the ladder and being a pulis pangkalawakan that i find difficult to fulfill when i am doing something else.

–

ON ASUS EEE PC KEYBOARD

february 10

i just had my asus eee pc repaired at the asustek center along united, pasig. my keyboard is not sticking anymore! yehey! damage? P600 for a new keyboard. not bad, considering that the guy at asustek megamall told me it would cost P2,100 for a new keyboard.

i have to warn you that the silicon underneath the keys easily get busted if you hit your keys pretty hard everyday.

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IT’S LONELY THERE

feb 17

i always have to tell myself that i cannot please people all the time. but no matter how i try to console myself with that saying, i still end up depressed that there are people who aren’t happy with me.

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PLAYING WITH EEEBUNTU AND CRUNCHEEE

feb 21

been experimenting with some distros of linux using a “live” flash disk to solve my worm and screen size problems i have with windows XP.

i tried the eeebuntu netbook remix flavor. it was ok since i found that it detected my cellphone as a 3G modem and it will detect my globe visibility modem, too (haven’t tried yet but some of the people in the ubuntu forms confirmed this).

however, it still have those annoying bugs that keep me from shifting to eeebuntu. i noticed that some of the dialogue boxes are bigger than the screen, therefore, the confirmation buttons are hidden below. the annoying part is that i couldn’t move the dialogue boxes just to be able to click “yes” or “delete”.

i thought the netbook remix is already optimized for small screens like the eee pc.

another ubuntu distro i’ve been toying with is cruncheee or the crunchbang linux made for eee pc.

what i like about cruncheee is that it solves my problem with the dialogue boxes and it only uses little resources compared with eeebuntu. but the theme/desktop is bland but that can be solved with a few tweaks. or using compiz fusion (in my opinion, much neater than windows or mac effects), but that would defeat the purpose of having cruncheee installed (compiz would probably hog a lot of space and resources).

cruncheee/crunchbang linux is based on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), same as eeebuntu and ubuntu eee, therefore, my 3G modems may still work with cruncheee.

been mulling over shifting our desktop to ubuntu to avoid virus, trojans, worms, etc. (been attacked by this annoying trojan two nights ago that kept me up until 2 am) BUT i think i would have problems with drivers for my peripherals. some blogs and forums say that there are drivers out there and some are already imbedded in ubuntu 8.10 but i think Other Half is not ready for the shift.

i’m gonna be playing with ubuntu eee next. just finished downloading the ISO.

found this entry in my archive of unpublished blogs written using notepad. i was probably in some coffee shop waiting for Other Half to pick me up when i wrote this.

—

june 26, 2008

there are the legits. and there are the hao siao.

what are the hao siaos? well they are fake reporters. they go to press conferences, stockholders meetings and other big events that press people often attend to connect with sources, to do interviews or just catch up on tsismis.

what do they do? you have to take note that they are the biggest poseurs and for the life of me i cannot understand what motivates them. they often go to these events as freeloaders: they get free food and drinks and corporate giveaways.

they throw their weight around like they came from a big network or a big paper. they occupy the center tables. they shout at the hapless staff manning the registration or the giveaway/loot table if they weren’t able to get extra stuff.

what they do is they stuff their bags with food and loot but they complain to the waitresses/service crew that they were not yet given any yet. i’ve seen them do that many times.

one time, this particular old hao siao guy that we often encounter (he is a fixture, mind you) fought fiercely with the head of the food crew of a well-known company. good thing the woman stood her ground. they had a shouting match.

nakakahiya.

i mean, what motivates them to do that year in and year out?! they can’t be that destitute since they are able fork out money for their jeepney/bus fares just to be able to come to these events.

grupo talaga sila ng matatanda na lagi naming nakikita sa mga events. dapat maawa ka sa kanila dahil baka nga dahil ng kahirapan kaya sila ganun. pero nakakairita na kasi minsan kasi nadadamay kaming mga legit. napepeste din kami kasi ang kulit-kulit.

i have this theory that the bigger the “press IDs” are, the bigger hao siao your are. i haven’t proven whether this theory is right.
–

as for the “press IDs”, mukhang totoo.

there was this time my colleague and i were waiting for our sundo then here comes a car with a very big  plastic laminated cut out of “The __________” (name of newspaper) masthead plastered on the wind shield. then this car parked in the space reserved for employees of the government office we often visit when we make our rounds.

haha. empleyado lang pala ng _______.

my colleague ranted, “ang kapal-kapal ng mukha nya! sino ba sya bat di ko sya kilala? eh ako ngang reporter ng dyaryo na yan di ako naglalagay ng ganyan sa kotse ko!”

there you go.

…probably next to childbirth? i dunno.

but my odontectomy today is — so far — the most physically painful medical experience i’ve ever had. what started out as a check-up and seemingly uneventful prophylaxis led me to have my gum/jaw “mutilated”. the procedure calls for

“Removal of teeth by the bending back of a mucoperiosteal flap and excision of bone from around the root before the application of force to remove the tooth.” - medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com

i asked my new dentist why does my wisdom tooth (or half of it since it has not fully sprouted after a year of peeking out) hurt so much? my gum was inflamed when i had my teeth cleaned.

it turned out that my jaws are too narrow/small to accommodate that many teeth, hence, my wisdom tooth had a hard time coming out. then it threatens to turn sideways and it has been hitting my jaw hinge for quite some time. she said that was the reason why my jaws click.

i thought that was normal, that jaw clicking, but when she told me that, i became suddenly conscious of it. if my wisdom tooth is not extracted as soon as possible, i would have bigger problems.

based on the definition above, it’s no wonder wonder why i’m in so much pain right now.

what made my experience a lot worse was that the anesthesia didn’t work on me quite well. when the orthodontist/surgeon was excising some bone, i was feeling the whole thing, not just the pressure from his hands but also the mind-altering pain . i asked for another shot of numbness. when he was pulling out my effing tooth, the PAIN was there again. he gave me two shots more.

this time the anesthesia worked to the point that i was already drooling blood all over my dentist’s sink and on myself. i didn’t feel that my mouth was already hanging open and i can’t seem to close it. it seemed like i was also choking in my own blood.

i suddenly had visions of myself oozing fresh blood from my mouth like i was shot from behind or somewhere fatal. then i played a movie in my mind and the scene was: i was near-death on the street, with blood all around me and melodramatic music at the background. i suddenly had this urge to see how i looked like with blood all over my mouth. the thought made me gurgle with laughter inside that i coughed and had to excuse myself and hurl spit-and-blood at the sink next to the dentist’s chair.

i blame the high alcohol content in my system for the seemingly ineffectiveness of the anesthesia. i’ve had a couple of beers with vodka somewhere in between last tuesday (thus the slightly drunken state of the newspaper 2 days after). i dunno if it’s a valid reason but i can’t find any. note to self: do not have alcohol the week your bone is to be sawed off.

the next thing to be done (after my dentist removes the stitches her ortho-surgeon classmate did on me) is to have my lower teeth braced so that all of them would move with cooperation towards the direction of the newly vacated place of my troublesome wisdom tooth. aside from aesthetic purposes, this would allow my other wisdom tooth to have enough room to sprout and avoid hitting my jaw hinge again. and avoid another odontectomy.

i don’t want another odontectomy done to me. ever. now i have a new wish for my enemies (instead of wishing that they just drop dead, magagalit si papa jesus nun eh): i wish ma-odontectomy sila without anesthesia!

i spent the entire morning (until 2 pm actually) last sunday scanning highschool pictures of my classmates and shared these with them for a trip down the memory lane through facebook. it was tedious but kind of rewarding since my classmates were surprised that i had pictures of events they don’t remember yet they were there.

even back then, i was already fond of taking snapshots of seemingly mundane things or ordinary things on ordinary days. back then it seemed like i was just wasting a lot of films since i just took photos at random. and i wasn’t even in the frame (but of course, i was the photographer!).

how i wish i had money then so i could’ve taken more photos. these “random” photos now are precious as they gave me and my batchmates a clear view of what we were doing then and how we looked then when we were not posing for the camera.

when we bought our canon SLR when i was in college (for my photography class), i “wasted” rolls of films and captured our tambay days at the college steps, our drinking sprees, meetings i had with batchmates in front of the auditorium…again, i wish i had more money for processing and films so i could’ve documented our tambay days in one batchmate’s apartment, our (my brods and sisses) moments together like the newwspaper drive, carwash, rummage sale — all those crazy money-making schemes we were coming out with…

it’s nice to digitize them now and share these with friends over facebook so we can reminisce together. it was hard to share these before, pre-digital life since it involves negatives and recopying. quite expensive i must say.

with the advent of digital cameras and camera phones, we are now taking snapshots of almost everything. we’re documenting our lives more and in more detail than ever before. maybe that has lessened the “preciousness” of those moments. but maybe after 10 years i would be telling myself, “i wish i had taken  more photos of this and that” or “documented this and that in detail”. i was telling myself that when my father died and said i should’ve taken more photos of him with my digicam when he was still alive. i could’ve kicked myself.

i have so many digital photos of my family and friends that i still have to have printed out and arrange in an album. whatever for, you might ask. i dunno, maybe to complete the documenting experience. all my travel albums have cut outs of the brochures of the places i went to, the places where i ate or visited, the airline ticket stubs or boarding passes.

yes, it creates clutter but you’ll never know, these may become of some value in the future. a tool to remind me or my children of my past without the aid of cyberspace and the computer. for me, online or digital albums are convenient but so impersonal to me. devoid of the personality of the person documenting an event…

so when i scanned my highschool photos, i couldn’t help myself — i had this pain or some weird feeling inside akin to something i feel when i am about to cry. i couldn’t bring back the simple life, the carefree life i had then. growing up was torture (teenage angst) but i would love to have that kind of life again. i was in a hurry to grow up then. but now i am now wishing to be back there again, in that school, to sing in a glee club again, to act on stage again, to have all the time in the world to hang out with my friends at the lobby, just to have time…

it’s nice to look at those times again but i guess retrogressing is not healthy. it seems like i’m shirking from my responsibilities. i have to move forward. i still have a job waiting for me tonight.