Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

I’m currently reading Empress Orchid by Anchee Min.

It was a bookstore discovery made by Bemjo, while we were on SM North Edsa, looking at shoes. It was funny because we were both stooping down and trying on some pairs when she suddenly thought of Fullybooked and Powerbooks.

She asked me if I know where they can be found inside the mall. I said no. When we both straightened up and looked around unconsciously, our eyes caught the green and white colors of Booksale. And we left shoes for books.

Empress Orchid is basically all about a poor girl’s journey towards proving herself to become a worthy concubine for the Emperor. This is what I can deduce from the number of pages I have read. I’m not even halfway, haha!

What I like about Anchee Min is the way she writes about day-to-day events—same reason I keep on reading Japanese, Chinese and Indian novels. Their plots are so detailed that each day never registers boredom. I am very much in love with how they write about nature and how they weave it with reality and emotions. They have deep respects for ordinary things, a phenomenon that is not so ordinary among people nowadays. These are also the reasons I love reading Filipino anthologies and it is one of my dreams to own a thick book of Filipino anthologies. Waaaah.

Even with my killer schedule, I still find time to read about it because I know the last page will be very much worth it. I recommend it for all of you who are under the same sky with me. 

The Lonely Things

I am not sure if this post projects me in any way at the moment. Hehehe! But, whatever the reason is, I just knew I wanted to write down a few things or objects that I think are the loneliest on Earth.

1. Money. Much has been said about their purpose and how they keep life’s wheel turning. But are they really where they belong? If I’m going to push this thought a little farther, I’d say that money really belongs to the bank. See the new ones that glisten? Who ever said that the most useful things are the loneliest probably knew a lot of things.

Not to mention all our heroes who have been twisted, turned, wet, thrown, sh** on, licked, exchanged, mixed with melted ice cream and many more.

2. Slippers. When we leave home, we leave them useless. And because that’s their sole purpose, I can only imagine how sad they feel every time we leave the house. Of all the kinds of slippers, perhaps bedroom and bathroom slippers are the loneliest, having to stay in closed areas all the time.

3. Tokens (which are left for days inside the game machines). We drool over the idea of having them so we could exchange them for goodies. We silently curse those who got the jackpot. We want to shake the whole gaming machine every time we’re frustrated. But the truth remains that tokens are one of the loneliest things.

Not to mention they all look the same. What a loooong day just to get them moving. How frustrating is that for them?

4. Seldom-used emoticons. Come on, when Jejemon went up the fad ladder, not everyone joined in. When it faded away, so did the fad of using emoticons. For some people.

5. Bottle caps. Stepped around if not picked by young kids, most bottle caps could have seen better days.

6. Bible. ’nuff said.

The One Who Brings A Lot of Food To The Office

This is who I am now.

Every day that I am in the office, I bring lunch, a drink, two sets of snacks and if my wallet allows, tiny sweets. I find it funny that I look like someone who’s battling hunger everyday. I suddenly feel sad for those kids in poverty-stricken areas.

I leave home before 9AM to make it to the office before 10. Before that, I should have drank milk, eaten a sandwich or a light breakfast. At 11AM, the first set of snack goes down. Lunch happens around 12 in the afternoon. Even when I already ate two sandwiches an hour earlier, trust me, my stomach is already hungry again. At 3PM (after a conscious glance at the computer clock), I would munch on the second set of snack or the tiny sweets. Before I leave the office at 7, I would have consumed enough to feed two to three people one square meal each. Hahahaha!

Is this weird? :D

Am I real?

Sometimes, when I have nothing else to do except to lie down and wait for sleep to overpower me, I would think about the extremely bad things in life:

What will happen if I die? What will I die of and who will be coming to my wake? How useless I was for not being able to give back to my parents for all their hard work..

What will happen if I lose someone I love? Will I be crying as hard as those in television? Will there be times when I space out and find myself in a different place? What will I say or do if we meet again?

What will happen if I end up poorer than I am now?

I would cry just by thinking about all of these. And I never show my tears to anyone. They will just laugh at me and tell me I’m crazy or too paranoid, haha!

Five seconds later, when I exhausted my emotional self, I would think about happy and triumphant thoughts. (I don’t know about you, but I see this as an ‘exfoliating/rejuvenating’ process)

I would think about how happy I will be if I end up with someone I really loved and be able to share my future with him.

I would think about the children I will send to school—mine or not. I would think about how to reprimand them, teach them Math (a subject I am not good at) and watch them grow.

I would think about how will I be able to let my children taste how wonderfully I cook if I cannot cook right now.

And, I would smile until I sleep.

Be inspired. :)

Because you need to be inspired, not because you are down but because you need to be reminded of how wonderful you are. :)

*photo from Google Images

The Enigma That Is Mr. _

There will always be this person who will be an enigma to you.

He and you were not classmates. He and you do not belong to the same clique. He and you do not share common interests. He and you have not really shared a conversation.

But you found yourself admiring him. Because of how he faces life with a sarcastic tongue and a brilliant mind that shocks even those who take a bath and comb their hair everyday.

My friends and I agree that this person is every inch an ideal man for any girl. But he seems unlucky when it comes to love. For chrissakes, he deserves to be loved! But how cruel the world is, for letting him be among those who love—only he does not get his love back.

He is one-of-a-kind. As I write this, I sometime wonder if I ever had a crush on him. No, you would not fall for his looks. It would be because of his brilliance, his wit, his words.

Luck is the future girl, we think, as we see him pass by, ready for the next class. His eyes never look kind.

“Nanay and Tatay”

When I was younger, I thought the titles “Nanay & Tatay”, “Mama & Papa” and “Daddy& Mommy” are status symbols.

I thought “Nana and Tatay” belonged to poor families, “Mama and Papa” were how you called your parents if your family can afford more than the basics and “Mommy and Daddy” were parents to spoiled children who had frilly clothes and fat, lazy cats.

My parents wanted me to call them “Nanay and Tatay”. I did so without letting my classmates know. We lived in a nipa house and when a storm would pass by we would hide under the table. Hahaha! When it rained and the path walk to the dirt road was muddy, my father would piggyback ride us three one by one until we reached the highway.

It took me years to reveal this to my classmates: that we were poor and life was as simple as can be. After all, my parents did all they can to send us all to a private Catholic school in town. We were luckier than 90% of the children who lived in our barangay.

As I grew older, I began to see the tenderness that were in “Nanay and Tatay” that most children cannot mimic when they ask for new toys. “Mama and Papa” often clashed with “Nanay and Tatay” such that the former were reserved for one’s nuclear parents and the latter, for the grandparents. “Mommy and Daddy” were the ones used when one is asking for one peso coins to buy Stick-O or homemade pastillas.

As I recounted my piggyback ride and under-the-table-during-the-storm days, I smiled at the status symbols that were never meant to be.

The Home That Is Iloilo <3

When I am at home, I feel different. The positive different.

Unlike when I am in Cebu or Manila where work calls me to be up and awake all the time, Iloilo is like a pillow-blanket-mosquito net combination. The place enables me to laze around all day and be happy in a world full of anything but rules and needs.

When I am at home, I have time to think. About me, my life and the people who surround me. I can think about them and space out for hours. Only my mother’s calls of the three most wonderful time of the day can break the spell.

Iloilo makes me lazy. While Cebu and Manila demands of me to clean my room or wash my clothes, Iloilo encases my being and makes me a bum. My mother would bark the list of chores that needed to be done, and I would pause for a moment and think that these is one of the best music undiscovered by men.

This is the only place where I feel most comfortable even when I have not taken a bath for days. All I seem to do all day is open the refrigerator and plug in something in the socket.

When I am in Iloilo, I can be very productive in the ideal sense. I have time for stimulating thoughts—not the ones filled with memos, attendance and office rules.

I lavish at the thought of leaving this place to go back to the workroom. Because it is only during that moment that I look forward to the day I can go home to Iloilo once more.

Miss Understood :)

I met Wila a few days ago. She looked prettier than ever.

She is a sophomore law student from the University of San Agustin. I met her during our freshman year, when she and I were just stepping foot in UP. I cannot remember how we stuck together. But when four years saw me and her (along with a few others) through college, I knew she had become one of my best friends.

No dirty thoughts there, matey.

She likes Japanese anime and fastfood. She and I would order Kenny’s and aaaalways, she found it hard to finish her chicken.

I miss her girly sing-song voice. It is something really unique about her. A lot of people mistook it for Wila being a snob, but she never took them all badly. She is the type who does not care about what people think of her.

I often see her as a fragile person, a girl who needs to be taken care of. But she is strong. Millions of barbels away from me.

My other friends and I would often mimic the way she speaks and make it sound worse to annoy her. We would also mimic the way she moves, reacts and smiles. I realized it was one of the fun things we did a lot in college.

I remember my elementary days when I felt proud to have a pretty friend. My reasons for befriending pretty people were superficial before. Now, it got worse. KIDDING.

I miss Wila. I hope we can hang out again soon.

How It Went.

It rained during our patronal fiesta.

This single phenomenon discouraged a lot of people from coming. I cried (drama, I know. XD) when I heard that he cannot come because of it. Miserable, eh?

An hour and a good bath later, I realized that maybe it happened because it was meant to. It made me realize that while I was able to go home and enjoy the holidays with my family, I cannot have everything–especially not this weather’s favor.

Anyway, a lot of people still came. And he made me realize that having each other is already something to be really happy about.

I will be posting photos later.