Moving On

It's been a long time since I last blogged. Recently, I do either when I am bored or disappointed over something. I blog now because of the latter.

About a year ago, we moved to a house that we were crazy about. It has the perfect size for a couple. It had all the elements we wanted, trees, birds, a great hillside view and an amazing sunset almost everyday except when it's cloudy.

We were happy. We were content. We are quiet people. We hardly go outside. Besides our family, we had only entertained people close to our age three times. We did things that made us happy. The other inconveniences like noisy neighbors, expensive water bills, high association dues, it did not matter to us. We were just there minding our business.

It all changed one day over a little thing, which led to something else, getting bigger and bigger. And we decided to let go of the house we bought. There are fights to battle, but this one is not going to work. We cannot live there til old age and be surrounded by people who do not like us.

Sunday Morning

Yesterday, I was awake for over 24 hours. The past week, we've been doing nine to ten-hour shifts, with little break, working on making and editing transcripts one after the other, and was advised of two more weeks of work like that.

There's a lot of stuff I want to do now. November is supposed to be a nice month. I'd like to buy Christmas decorations. I want to finish the stories I started. I have Kurecolor markers, but I have yet to get inspiration. I have a decent amount of art materials, unused for quite some time now.

I wonder if my friends still remember me, or if they still have me close to heart.

I have always been making plans to do the things I want every year. 2013, as inauspicious as the last two digits are, I intend to take some risks. I am planning to open an online business. I am planning to find a job that may not be necessarily something I like, but definitely something I can genuinely be proud of (not just by title or things like that).

I enrolled myself to a gym, just three months. I plan to get fit soon. I am joining a fun run December 1. And I would do that. I am still torn whether I should take art classes or writing. I plan to enroll for  that before the year ends, and hopefully start next year.

This I tell the jaded fuckers who kinda unwittingly drag me with them down the path of corporate drabness, I am gonna do the things I fucking like! Bwahahaha!

New Older iPhone

I like technology, though I am not the type that has all the latest gadgets there is available, because it is too expensive. As much as I like to buy all those stuff, I just don't like buying things that depreciates so quickly. After a year, after spending a month's salary worth to buy the latest phone, it would just be a fraction of it's original worth.

I was even without a phone for  three months until everyone insisted that I get one after the monsoon that flooded Manila.

However, two weeks ago, my sister told me of iPhones being on promo by my service provider. iPhone 5 is coming out, so I think they're trying to dispose as much of them as they could. So I went to the mall and got myself the 3GS model. It may be prehistoric as far as technocrat's are concerned but I got it practically free.

Some Burden off my Shoulders

When I applied for this job, I thought I'd be just editing. But it seems that I have more responsibilities with people than I had with my last job. The last job that I had, all I needed to do was edit, and I mean EDIT A LOT, and to hell with everything that happens to anyone else.

Here, it is team work. And I was placed in a situation slightly higher than most of my colleagues. Considering I was never a transcriber, I felt such a phony, knowing that I am paid much more than average.

When I came in, I had to learn stuff. While similar to my old job, the whole dynamics is different. I have serious socialization problems, and I do not like talking to people that much. It's just how I am and I have no intention of changing who I am, even if social skills is a company metric. Swerte naman nila kung babaguhin ko ang pagkatao ko para sa kanila.

Housemate

Up in the ceiling, we have a housemate. We're not sure what he or she is. All we know know is that he's been there for months. He was not there when we first moved, then later on, we noticed the sounds he makes at night.

So this roused our curiosity, not knowing how to check him out. Immediately, we suspected he's a python. It is not uncommon for homes for Philippine homes to have pythons in its vicinity, especially with the kind of environment we have. Then we also suspected the supernatural kind.

That made us unsure if we want to check him out. We then made a list of what they can be. We later on decided that snake slithers and it is doubtful that snakes make those seemingly footstep sounds (for the lack of words that I could think of now).

Of Opinions on the Internet

These days, everyone has a say. It's perfectly normal, I have an opinion and I bet everyone else has, too. And I would feel sorry for the person who doesn't have any. However, these days, people's opinions are pretty much known to everyone, if they go online.

Ten years ago, the Internet was a place to say your opinion, so does now. But it was different back then. The Internet was used to do research for school and, for a lot more people, download porn. There are forums to discuss stuff like religion, politics, metaphysics and such. Although marginalized, it did not matter what background you came from, what mattered was the weight of what you say. At times I reveled at this and learned the hard way that making a statement without  knowing much about it could lead to embarrassment (even if you are discussing them among people you have never met).

Thanks to the convenience of social networking, the Internet has become more democratized. I have hundreds of friends on Facebook, many of which are people I know but I couldn't really call friends. If I narrow it down, I have maybe 20 friends on FB.

Sight of fireflies

At night, I would go outside and wait for the van arranged by the company to fetch us to work. The past days, I am seeing fireflies. It's been a long time since I saw them last, my childhood, I reckon. It made me glad we got the house.

It must have been the rains that made them reappear. And I hope it rains more because I want to see them more. Fireflies aren't like how they are depicted on TV and movies. The ones we have locally, anyway. They aren't really that bright and they don't shine like steady mini-lanterns.

They move flickering and fading dimly, so at first sight, I thought I might have been imagining them or my eyesight is failing me. When I finally realized that I did indeed see them, I was happy to be there and hated riding the van.

It's a nostalgic thing. And it made me hate so many things in the world that led us to no longer appreciate such subtle beauties in nature, because we need to work, think of the bills and things like that. I am guilty, I have to admit, I have responsibilities, I get home too tired to do anything much, and I know I have to do chores later.

I wish things in the world are as I thought it would be like when I was a kid, but it isn't and I know I have to deal with that.

Grave of Beetles

Like I may have said numerous times on this blog, one of the reasons we chose this house is because of its environment, unique birds, lizards, trees, plants and insects.

While we see all sorts of moths and bugs, I commented once that I no longer see the kind of beetles I saw as a kid. They are the cute brown types that feeds on tree sap. I don't know exactly what their scientific name to provide you a name, but they are really cute and not repulsive at all.

So perhaps I may have summoned them, because during the past several weeks, they made a reappearance in my life, especially when it rains at night. They go inside the house, three or maybe four at a time, and then they die.

Yesterday, I scooped one out from the folds of our living room curtain and placed him outside on a horsetail shoot in front of our window,which I closed just in case he decides to sneak back in. Maybe it's the warm light we're using or maybe this mother of beetles has a nest here and she decided to have a family. I am not sure.

It's starting to bug me. So I pick them up as soon as I could, if I can, and let them out of the window. Unfortunately, I cannot save them all. There is one, just this morning, in the bathroom, floating in a tub of soapy water; one on the floor to be swept out; one dead on a bowl; and you just start feeling sorry for them.

Suddenly, I was able to understand what Holden Caulfield was saying:

Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. -- JD Salinger, The Cather in the Rye

Only in my case, it's beetles.

Learning How to Play

When I was about four or five, we had this neighbor, Terry, who was schizophrenic. One day, when I was out playing with neighbors, I may have wandered through their living room and was playing with their piano.

Being very young and my memory isn't very clear at that time, the details are a bit vague to me. She gave me a crash course in playing the piano. I always thought of Terry as nice, although strange. I remember it being an awkward situation. So she walked me home and told my mother how much potential I had with playing the piano.

Rediscovery

For the past week, I have rediscovered tweeting. I had an account for over a year now (or maybe even longer) and never quite got used it... until now.

It's actually cool. I just make it a point to follow only the people who interest me, who post stuff that interest me, unlike those awful trolls on Facebook. I think that was what I should have done on FB, but social dictates required me to be polite and approve people because FB has become a way of life for almost everyone  below 40 (and sometimes older).

And so, I am not spared from people I am not close to who post raunchy photos, insipid status updates and their vapid lifestyles. I hardly use it anymore, plus it kinda messed up my life for more than a year, when some photo of crazy people with me on it came out online.

I am also into Tumblr these days without any followers. I used to get bored with it, most of the pages I see are reposting other people's work. I am doing a makeover of it now by posting my amatuerish artwork a little everyday until I run out of pics, so that it may inspire me to draw again when I have nothing more to post.

http://jaypox.tumblr.com/

Earnings season is almost over, and I am excited to stop editing the stuff I do at work and have my life back again, until maybe mid-April when second quarter earnings season begins.

Dinner

Meow and I had a nice dinner with candle lights, red wine, munggo and leftover chicken.

It was really nice. There we were in the study, surrounded by still-unpacked things from November, our new shelf, all our books, the dog Border peering by the window, and just talking without the diversion of TV.

I guess this was the life I thought of having as a kid. Sure, the neighbors are annoying. But it's still nice, the house, the cool wind. It's got all we need in a house. You see, we don't like going out that much.

Nothing's wrong with having things simple.

Awake on Early Sunday

I woke up at 3 am. Meow's still asleep. She's been reading my Fables comics last night.

I hate having anxiety attacks. Hahaha!

I opened my email, and found someone again praising my profile on Flork. I think my flork account has more info about me than I do on Facebook. Sadly. Or maybe because when I had anonymous profiles, I feel free to type whatever I wanted.

I Got a New Job

Finally, we now have Internet. The people at Sun Broadband don't seem to want to go to our place for the tech visit, so we ended up with Wi-Tribe and they had connection up and running in less than a day. May the universe bless them.

So I was able to land a job that provides free transportation from home to work, and provides unlimited beverage in the pantry. So after years of not drinking much carbonated drinks, I am consuming Coke because it seems to be the only thing that keeps me awake between 3 a.m. to 4. It's weird. And I get to be really perked up again by 4. It's seems like I get I am afflicted bya sleeping disorder during the witching hour.

Having been completely antisocial independent for over two years, I find it challenging to work with a team. They seem to be really close, and I am the only new person there. The people I know in the company are people in a different team with bigger responsibilities than I do.