Remember when we were younger, back when Friday meant something? It wasn't just a day to get over with. It was a celebration of sorts.

At least that's how I remember it. It was out with the itchy white polos, uncomfortable black jeans and worn-out black leather shoes. Our PE uniform had green stripes on one sleeve, I think, but we definitely had green jogging pants, and at the worst of times it felt like, well, felt paper. It was itchy at its worst. We also got to wear rubber shoes, and at some point we were showing off our new pairs, if ever we had new pairs, back when the obsession for athlete-signed footwear was just a concept. Well, until the school asked us to wear Advan shoes because it's more economical. Less comfortable, too.

All that fuss meant we had PE class, and for us it meant playing games outside. There's this wide field in front of the school, and we all gathered there, treating the whole thing as an extension of recess rather than an academic exercise with added physical effort. If it wasn't an extended conversation pepper with pranks, it was a game. I forgot which games we played there, but it felt different from when we played dodgeball or agawan-base inside the school. PE had a dignified feel, at least until we used the time to rehearse for our annual Family Day, and that half-flamboyant (and eternally annoyed) choreographer - whose name slips me, despite his name being specially-embroidered in his pair of jogging pants - comes by.

We gome home and watch television, and it's different from the rest we see all the other days of the week. Gone are the one-story sitcoms and dramas, and in go the assortment of sketches - back when we didn't call it "sketches" - and the messy game shows, and the cartoons. The cartoons, yes. Cartoons on prime time! Or, if your mind goes way back, foreign teen dramas! Cable was unheard of, or at least not available.

Sure, Fridays still hold the same the-weekend-is-here! significance, especially now that we're working (or at least most of us) and we're longing for the days when all we did was not worry. But something's been lost from those days to now. I don't know. We didn't really worry about what we'll do on the weekend, for one. All we knew back then, we get two days off school and we can do whatever we want. Now, there's got to be something, and we still worry, for the most part. Where to go, what to do, who to be with, if you choose to do so, that sort of thing. Or, why isn't anyone.

All of a sudden, Friday doesn't mean much anymore, because it all bleeds to there and to Saturday and to Sunday, and the next thing we know, it's Monday again, and we're not happy with those two days off. Contrast that to back then, and it felt two days were more than enough.

Right now, I'm not wearing a white shirt with green stripes on one sleeve. I'm not wearing Advan rubber shoes, and I'm thankful that it isn't raining, or else my Climacools would be moot. I'm not outside playing. I'm not kidding around with people. I'm not hanging around. I'm not laughing, more or less. It doesn't feel special, until you realize that when you go home and sleep, you don't have to wake up to the sound of your mobile phone's alarm. The rest is appreciated, but the rest make you feel that nothing happened, and then Monday comes and we'll wait all over again. The anticipation inevitably disappears.

"I am of the belief that once you write something down, you finally mean it."

I figured Lizette must be right, so I figured I'll write the things that I never wrote down because I didn't want to deal with it ever again.

For better or worse, this story is over. If there are any feelings left for you, it's on the bad side. I find you frustrating. I find you annoying. I find you everything else, but you definitely don't care, so I shall stop here. Well, except for my usual complaints about me wondering why it had to be you in the first place.

And you, I'm sorry I raised what happened before, because for some reason it's come to haunt me. I don't know. Maybe because the story ended in naïve bliss, rather than the painful resolution that (forcefully) ended that other story? Honestly, it was odd knowing you had a boyfriend three years ago, because I didn't feel anything, or because I felt something for someone else. Whatever that feeling is.

I don't like conference calls. I can get by on my own. I don't want to deal with all of you anymore; apart from avoiding you when you're off to lunch, you pretty much don't exist anymore, unless you talk amongst each other about mundane stuff.

I don't hate my headphones. I hate my streams, for they drop at the worst time. On the contrary, I love my headphones, especially the volume control. It serves a very good purpose.

I'm not a team worker. This will get me into trouble when some prospective employer sees this, but I actually think I am a team worker. I can cooperate, and I do cooperate, but if it's not the right thing to do, then I won't. Thus, I don't like conference calls and group emails. I'm not really part of a team, or at least the tangible one. That's why I daydream of the Space Needle sometimes.

I don't like my daydreams, especially if it's about something very much impossible but very much wanted.

I still want somebody after all these years. It sounds wrong when you realize you have to work your ass off to get it. It sounds more wrong when you realize others do it with less effort. It sounds even more wrong when you realize that it's all for nothing. I'm having those it's-all-for-nothing moments. I'll never make it.

I can get by on my own. For the most part.

Got to work, checked my email, and there's one, from Anna. Actually, from LiveJournal. She replied to a comment I posted on her blog, which was odd, because I haven't posted anything on her blog for quite a while. In fact, she hasn't posted anything on her blog for quite a while.

"How come I'm just seeing this now?" she wrote.

I saw the comment she was replying on, and I myself couldn't remember why I said it. It was gloopy, unusual for someone like me. In fact, it felt a bit forced. I can sense it, of course, for I wrote the words.

"Isn't that the sweetest ending? And fairy tale-ish at that."

Apparently I wrote those words two years ago. Twenty-five months and a week ago, in fact. Anna wrote about how she was given a midnight curfew to attend a birthday party, and how she broke that rule, and how surprised she was that her parents didn't get mad when she got home. 

Well, actually it was Milan's birthday, and on that day they became together.

It was a pretty good story, maybe gloopy, so maybe that's why I wrote one of the gloopiest phrases I ever wrote.

"If that means seeing you around finally with a bigger grin on your face, then it's all worth it, I guess. I can't help but be happy for ya."

Yep, that's ya taking the place of you.

Anna and I barely knew each other back then. I think I followed her on LJ solely because we took the same course, but apart from that, there was no bond to speak of. Around that time I was only learning about the existence of the other CAM block, when I ended up taking a floating class with Cam, Piyar and that block's other Anna. But I remembered her for the wrong reasons, which was exactly why, I now recall, I wrote those words on her blog. I guess even if you don't really know the person, you feel happy for them when you know it's coming.

Quite ironic, you see, considering that I am now probably the most cynical person you ever know. I have lost all sense of optimism in me, and perhaps more importantly, that feeling of genuine happiness for someone else when it happens. Hardened by time, they'd probably put it. Real world blues.

So there I was, in front of the computer I've been friends with for the past fifty-seven weeks, delaying work just to read that blog entry, and wondering why all that happened in the two years that separated me posting that comment, and Mooie - of course, you know who she is - seeing that comment. Two years, and it seems I have lost a lot of things. I was trying to look for it in her response; it was, after all, a compliment, and you know I love compliments, if only to remind me that amidst everything, some people get it, at least momentarily.

"Thank you, Niko," she wrote, grin in hand. "I still appreciate this comment after two years."

The last time she posted a blog entry, it was May. The middle of summer, of heatwaves and me wondering about myself. She was, too, talking about her future plans, which she kept secret even if I already had a clue. She wanted to change the world and I was slightly giddy about it, for some odd reason. Maybe write about what she believes in. Okay, I thought, maybe I could help you with that. She ended up writing about dreaming about work, wondering whether it was normal, and I said it was. And then she disappeared. Now, I figured, she must've written something.

She did write something new. She was giddy and happy and, well, happy. "I now have a new identity," she wrote last night. I looked down, my head searching for references, quickly getting it, and for a moment, when I finally saw the next paragraph, I actually smiled. That, I guess, was where my optimism went.

Now I can call her Teacher Mooie.

I wasn't always like this. I mean, I never always despaired about my feelings for someone. No sleepless nights (which is an exaggeration, but still) spent being anxious over whether that someone knew about what I felt for her. No deep conversations with her best friends about possibilities and probabilities. I was perhaps a little crazier then: I always found a way to tell that someone my feelings, whether it's a note on tissue paper, or a random slip in a conversation. Back then I never really worried about adverse results, because there never were any.

Well, not until this girl came along. We were in the same class, and I was still relatively naïve back then, so I had scant idea of how life worked in a different setting. Okay, college. But she's nice and sprightly and bubbly and just like all the other girls I fell for, only she was in college, and I felt a little fearless, which was odd because we didn't talk as much as we should. But we talked, still.

So one day, I came up to her and, well, I didn't really plan anything. I guess it just happened, but I thought of telling her anyway, because I figured, heck, it's just a crush, and a crush wouldn't do any harm, right? Well, at least until you become borderline obsessed and you know more things about her than she does. In hindsight, it's odd that I decided to drop that line in front of her friends.

"Alam mo, may crush ako sa'yo."

At that moment, it finally happened: I became anxious. Oh goodness, I just told her, and it can only go downhill from here. Curses!

"Ganun? Okay!"

It was a life-changing experience. Lesson number one: don't tell anyone what you feel, because there are only two possible reactions when you tell someone something like it. Either she treats it like useless trivia that only works in bars and parties, or she hates you for it forever. Sure, she treated it like useless trivia, but it felt a little good at that moment - she sounded her usual sprightly back then, even - but don't expect her to treat it like it's a privilege, because they won't go and say something like "alam mo ba, may crush sa'kin si Niko". More often than not, they'll be happier if the guy they're swooning for notices them, and it's never you.

Lesson number two: Don't get too giddy over it. If you act as if nothing's happening, there's a lesser chance that you'll want to spill it, and a lesser chance that you'll feel bad over saying it or otherwise. Obviously, I didn't follow that lesson well, and all the other girls, I think, found me a little creepy for my admissions, or lack of it. Statistically, I was never close with anybody that came after that girl in the story above. At least not that close - not as close as I am with her, and that's not even as close as some think.

Lesson number three: Always distract yourself. There's always something nearby when you find yourself getting a little deep. I'm the nostalgic sort, so more often than not I'm looking back at the time when things were much simpler - you know, back when you didn't worry about making an impression to that girl you like, back when all you had to do is be yourself and admit things and hope for the best. Maybe unintended or otherwise, but it should happen.

Oddly, I think I'm regressing a bit. Let's disregard the in-betweens, then. Scenario two involved one night of problems and two terms of not talking. Scenario three was a bit worse, because it involved a birthday gift and an urge to spill. Scenario four was goofy, because I told her first, and even planted a kiss on her cheek; I don't know what happened afterwards. Scenario five was fluffy. Scenario six was fucked up. Scenario seven sees me returning to scenario one, and I'm not even forcing it. You know, marriage, children, happy endings... maybe that one was real. Maybe that's why it was so effortless.

Birds of the same feather flock together, they say. Not that I don't believe it, but I think it makes absolute sense. That one thing in common makes it so much easier. Although, sure, there are some cases when the most unlikely of things create the most extraordinary of bonds - perhaps some adhesive is in order, but that's slightly old-fashioned - for the most part, it still lies in that one thing.

So, this should've made a lot of sense.

To be honest, I'm not really expecting much. I wasn't looking for that extraordinary bond, although it's foolish of me to think that's what I'm looking for. Or maybe that just came in so much later. I just wanted to fit, slide in easily, find that one little thing and make the most out of it, discover that it leads elsewhere, the usual things we don't notice we're doing. But that's putting it cheesily.

Initially, I thought it's my fault, that thing not taking off. And there they go again. I said too much, you weren't ready, you didn't like what you saw, you pushed me. Yeah, that sounds like I failed again - or maybe not again, really; it was the first concerted and slightly complicated effort, after all. I blamed myself for slipping just when I tried not to. I blamed myself for blaming myself, because it made things complicated. It always did.

Or maybe not.

I don't know if it's just you attempting to look hip by forcing yourself to be different. I mean, choosing not to follow that one common thing is understandable. Maybe there's something else you're looking for. I get that. We have to do it sometimes, especially when we're dropped like needles making some unfamiliar sound. I get that you want something else, maybe because you're looking for that thing that complements what you have, rather than matches it. Fine.

What I don't understand is what you ended up doing. I mean, that? From where I see it, that's just not right, and I'm torn between laughing at your stupidity and getting frustrated at your lack of insight. That? I don't care if you find that one common thing in that, but seriously. It obviously doesn't do you any good. It obviously isn't doing anyone any good. It does everything wrong, and yet you love it so much, you willingly submit to it with, I don't know, those blank-but-loaded stares through your black spectacles.

And I tried, and I tried even more, and we tried even more, and all you gave us was a shrug, or the middle finger, in my case. And you went there quickly.

I made mistakes, sure, but I won't make it up to anyone. There's nothing wrong with unknowingly barking up the wrong tree, and there's nothing wrong with being passionate, perhaps extremely passionate, as you try to break it. What's wrong is everything about you. Everything. Everything. The world is unfair, sure, but there's nothing wrong in thinking I deserve you more than anyone else.

I was at the bookstore after lunch - killing time as usual, for I only had one thing to write and four hours to go - and, while flipping through Time, I was reminded of how far back the Harry Potter films were.

My sister was a fan of the books, and I remember when the first film was released. Daniel Radcliffe was a strange name, and he was this slightly gawky kid who had to wear those round glasses. I think I was just eleven back then. She collected all photos of him that she could grab, in a failed attempt to create a fan site. Those photos, I think, disappeared when our hard drive finally conked out nine years later.

But back then they looked so young. Daniel was a kid suddenly thrust into the spotlight partly because he looks like the kids in front of all those books. I haven't read the series, so I can only connect Rupert Grint and Emma Watson so far. Tom Felton just looked annoying, like he was supposed to. I guess my innocent head didn't grasp the idea that we'd see them grow up, much like the way I didn't notice our own young actors grow up right before us. For some reason, they had to remain the way they are when we first saw them. Stuck in our heads, that.

Nine years later, the sixth film's showing in theaters, and they've all grown up, and it suddenly hits you. I should've known, at least somehow. I'm six months older than Daniel - he's turning two decades tomorrow, last time I checked - and my sister's as old as Emma. Yet, we think of them as those kids, never mind their attempts to further their acting careers.

I'm still seated in front of the computer, although I'm now writing articles for work rather than giving my sister a bad FrontPage tutorial. Clicking through Emma's photos, you realize she has grown - no longer the precocious Hermoine Granger. She is a lady, so they say. And there I was, a twenty year old finding some semblance of attraction. "It's the skin," as Harry said in the film. Easily shaken off, sure, wasn't exactly as enchanting as my other celebrity crushes, but you get the idea.

I remember a conversation that Jayvee and I had on Twitter. It was a short one, but we were talking about how Emma has grown, and how suddenly the young untouchable kid became someone you'd actually have a crush on. (Fine, whatever this suggests, whatever.) I can't recall what he exactly said, but it's somewhere along the lines of "she's perfect men's magazine material". Well, British people are either perverts or glams, as their magazines suggest; she's going the way of the fashion magazine.

Or, as Jan would say later, "can I just give .5's to [Emma and Bonnie]?"

Still unreachable.

I'm not really delusional. I honestly can't find my way out of this metaphor, but there's an idea somewhere. Something about the people you thought you were in the same league with, somehow, turning out to be so far away from you. And me, someone who's stuck in a time warp, can't find anything to associate with. I'm twenty and surrounded by older people, or younger people, and it seems they all have their same interests, and nothing to share with you. It's an odd feeling, really, when I'm having lunch and I see a pretty college student walk by, and I snap out of it realizing that she's definitely younger than me.

And the people you thought you'd associate with, even through the most shallow of means, well, they get ahead and you're stuck right there. I call that my terrible insecurities, or, someone that's, say, five months younger than me is more comfortable with being smug and snobbish than I am. And you feel eternally left behind.

The problem with Emma Watson growing up is, she just becomes like everybody else. You follow slavishly, while they rule the earth. And I have lost the metaphor entirely.

Horse blinders, as Sars put it. Something about being so focused with what you came to do, that you failed to notice all the things that happen in the fringes. In her case - and, inevitably, in my case, too - we came to college to study, not to make friends. At least not primarily.

And I told her I regret the decision. Everything has socialization attached, of course, and for some reason I failed to recognize it. Then again, there's nothing we could do about it. As much as we tried, even when it still wasn't too late, we weren't picked for anything. We didn't have that something special to be considerably close to someone, in those tired barkada standards that anybody ordinary thinks everybody should have. And you know how badly I wanted that.

Well, at least that's what I could gather from that long conversation Sars and I had. It was over Facebook, rather than on YM, and thus I couldn't grab an important quote when I need it. And archiving over there isn't working wonders, too; when I tried grabbing a quote, the whole conversation has disappeared. But that chat was funny in an ironic way. We began talking about her and her current work (and how she sometimes sees Piyar and Anna) and gravitated towards college in general, specifically our first year, especially that fail during our recollection.

If there's one thing I remembered - only because Sars reminded me - it's the way I envied Nico way back then.

I did forget it. We became pretty good friends until he left for Canada around three years ago, but in those early days he was just someone that just popped up out of nowhere. I think it was Dance-a-Parable practice. He was friends with Cuyeg, and by association he'd be friends with everybody else. I still had a crush on Ale then, and with it, the well-documented struggle to just talk to her, so imagine seeing her being grinny and all towards Nico. It was frustrating.

The point was, I think, I wanted to be good friends with everyone. And maybe I still do.

Struggles or otherwise things did get better. But not exactly. I might be exaggerating this now, but I never really felt close to anyone. Sure, there were some people who, at one point or another, became more prominent. But I guess that barkada standard still wanted its way, and while everybody grouped together, I just waited for nothing, or a lucky strike.

Sars and I talked about groupings in class activities. The same groups of people would come together. The same groups of people would shun the same people. There was always something in common, and later on, there was the almost unbreakable bond: unless you did something very bad, you'll be the first person to go to. I never really had that unless they wanted benefits, like someone to photocopy readings for them. People avoided people for some reason - some called it "quirks", something that's stuck in my head when I asked why I somehow get closer to people than, say, John. Sars thought she was too uptight, which is why she got close with only a handful of people in class.

So, sure, I managed to do my thesis with a group, and I managed to do "friendly things" with a group, and I got invited to a handful of things, but I still feel like an outsider. I'm just there just because they can, and apart from that, I'm pretty much left in the cold, like when these headphones fail to filter my insecurities out.

The regrets come in only today, in a time when you want company that's not out of obligation or saving face. Little reunions with friends, or bigger ones with everybody else, you're expected to gravitate towards someone without feeling uncomfortable about it; not because you have to but because it just is. I still regret not having a group of friends to turn to during weekends, when my life gets sucky and I feel very much, you know, stuck. For the rest who I talk to through keyboards, well, it feels more out of obligation, or pity, because I'm still the second choice, often passed over for other people who they feel more comfortable with. As if I can't do the same.

To be honest, all I wanted is to be someone's special someone. And I'm not referring to my family - that's by default, and that doesn't make it special. It's obligatory. I want magic.

By my own admission, this story is shallow. Waiting for a new battery for our then-useless car, and all the fatigue the twenty-second hour brings, meant the story I wanted to tell slipped through the cracks. Shame, for it was a much convincing story, although you can say it's more of a thought bubble that's built to make me look good.

It probably is. But so is this one, perhaps, because the shallow story involves me, and I'll most definitely be writing the next few paragraphs in a self-indulgent way.

But all I really wanted to do is to congratulate Zet. I mean, I'm probably caring a bit too much about her thesis, but being someone who's given her some advice as she tried to even get the chance to do her thesis, well, it's something I think I have to do, even if I think I don't have to. I may be too crazy when my thoughts go to that direction and I end up wondering whether it's been too much. But, yeah, it's really small in comparison.

I've long been done with my thesis, having graduated and all that, but I still receive emails from the faculty with word on those that came after us, which included most of my college friends and a few of my friends below the ladder, Zet included. But I wasn't supposed to have an idea. I'm actually a little annoyed at why I still get emails from TeamComm regarding activites that are definitely irrelevant to me, but I don't remove myself from their list. (Then again, they used to weed everyone out every year.)

So I checked my email this afternoon, and saw Miss Diaz announce the results of the second batch of topic readings last week. I just clicked on it so I won't have any new messages, but I ended up reading it anyway, because her explanations for why a student's proposal has been approved or otherwise were unusually long.

The word "interracial" filtered through, and I knew I had to text Zet.

"Congratulations on whaaat?" she replied. "I'm in Subic!"

Oh, what an unfortunate time to be in Subic. But I remembered that the same thing happened to me, or maybe something close to it. Char was the first to tell me that we got Sir Mariano as our mentor. John was the first to tell me that our proposal finally got approved, at the third reading. Both were through comments on this blog, which made it a little more public.

"Oh, so I'm the first to tell you?" I said.

It was a very odd feeling.

"Your proposal got approved."

And then I explained Miss Diaz's surprisingly long explanations. It's a screenplay about, if I remember correctly, interracial relationships. Filipino-Korean relationships, I think. She told me that in our few chats while I remained idle at work. I figured it's something she could do pretty well, once she gets past the paperwork and Sir Doy's pre-thesis filtering, to weed out the bad writers before he can handle them. And then I explained the others who made it, even if they're strangers for the most part. Four were disapproved entirely and have to play with new ideas entirely. A handful had to resubmit their proposals, with one because of the smallest detail. And then there were the four students who were given the go-signal.

My mind paced to the time when we got two resubmits and despaired about whether we'd be able to get our proposal approved. Two of us - Jason and I - had yet to fail a class, and at whatever point we can't afford to fail that and be delayed for a year. The rest, as that cliché goes, is history.

I counted nine exclamation points on her last text message. I could imagine she's jumping in joy at the most unexpected of places. I can see where she's coming from.

And it does feel good to be the bearer of good news, only I didn't expect to be that guy. That aside, the hard work's just to begin, and as all of those who did screenplays for thesis - John, Marcia, Sars, who else, Yoa? - it's going to be quite a long ride. Well, I did a screenplay myself, but we had to shoot it, too. I told you, this is going to be self-indulgent, but that good feeling's gone now, and tomorrow is just around the corner...

Like in most days, I've been idle for the past three hours or so. I've been seated here jumping from website to website, answering emails and snubbing people. Maybe dragging and dropping a few things on the computer, or taking quick peeks at the window outside to see if it's raining. Which is pretty moot, because obviously it is raining.

There've been a few odd things going on today. Not with the change of assignments or my predictable amazement at myself, but with the number of toilet visits I've done today. It's been so long but I still don't feel comfortable with leaving my desk and having to pass all those people, but today, it's more of a what-the-heck attitude. I think I've been drinking too much water, too, which explains the many trips to the toilet and to the water dispenser.

And there's this email going around the company - the usual reminders about taking care of your belongings, since apparently there's been a spate of thefts in the office. Guessing it's the night shift. I remembered that when I left for another one of those toilet breaks, because I left my iPod charging on my desk.

The odd thing is, I brought my iPod charger to work, when I usually would just let it die when it has to. Well, it hasn't, but it could.

All of a sudden I'm not used to these rains. Well, it's been raining for a while now, and my third umbrella's been put to good use, made more enjoyable by its smaller size and its one-button operation. (The second's disintegrated despite all my efforts.) I guess it's all because of yesterday, and the way I found myself stuck at the mall, eating dinner at McDonald's because my mom was concerned I'd go home to nobody, because they're stranded too, because the only way home is flooded and packed with vehicles.

More of a precautionary measure, actually. If I get stuck in traffic, at least I have my iPod for company, falling asleep but not, because there'd be theft, most definitely. And it'd be worse if the perpetrator's not one who I can catch.

And it feels eternally gloomy where I am right now. I've been here for nine hours and the lights on my row of desks are still turned off. Well, light's still sufficient. Guess the back row's ain't. So I don't know what's going on, and it's dark outside and inside. And I'm just dragging items across windows, trying to make things sound a little better. Maybe consider Kevin's invitation to some get-together in Cubao. I heard Ariane and Icka's going.

So I remove my iPod and charge my phone. I need my communication more than my music, as you very well know.

And then something Twilight-related comes to me and I get on it.

I know Kat had a figurative nose bleed when we first encountered this term during cultural studies class, but I'll launch it again, partly because it's slightly amusing to see Kat have a figurative nose bleed. Oh, please, don't make it a literal one.

Reification, according to Sir Bayot, began during the Industrial Revolution. Before that, we were something special. We had our own little abilities, and it's something we developed over time. With those abilities, we learned a lot of things, discovered a lot of others, and invented even a lot more. Thus, we found coal, we created the assembly line, and our productivity increased tenfold, maybe more. Well, there's something ironic with that statement, really: we produced more stuff, but we felt less productive, because we lost our jobs. As processes were streamlined, less people were needed to do certain things, and it became a cat fight of sorts. We became commodities.

Okay, Kat, here's your tissue if you need it.

I've learned not to be surprised with my conversations with Les. These things usually happen in the morning, preferably when I've finished most of my tasks waaay earlier than I should be. We'd talk about the deep stuff, the frustrating stuff, and occasionally wondered about where Steph has been. But, more usually, it's stuff about work. Or not specifically, but somewhere around that.

"I just hate the pressure, especially of the working world and how people you judge you based on your resume," she said, as I began watching True Blood for work. "If I quit my job and I don't get another one in a month, it's like a big sin!"

"This world is a slave driver," I answered. "They don't give a fuck about you, at all, despite 'corporate social responsibility' and 'employee motivation' and 'personal development' and all those buzzwords bullshit."

"Everything is bull," she simply replied.

Yesterday, I told her I apparently got a letter from DLSU, slightly excited that it's something that only a few people get. She told me she got a letter too, and then shattered my bubble: it's just the ITEO sending everyone a letter one year after our graduation, essentially asking us what we were up to since the beginning of the end of our lives. It's exactly what they do: survey after survey. Or, as I called it, "another way to shove down our asses the fact that life sucks after college."

Not exactly. I read that letter when I got home last night, and it was the usual questions. Did you go to work? Did you study again? Did you establish a business? It essentially went that way. The details weren't any special: just questions on where you went, how long you waited, and so on. But it still feels like another way to shove something down our something the something that something is something.

After all, life revolves around numbers. Sure, we wanted to return to comfortable college territory, but we all reached out for that 4.0 - or a 1.0, if you're deliberately aiming very low. When we worked on our resumes, we struggled with what to put where - "naaalala mo ba yung mga speakers sa Media Speakers Series?" - and striking that compromise between listing down all the impressive things we've done and keeping the whole thing to a maximum of three not-so-intimidating pages.

Right now? The set-up is, we all have to do a certain amount of articles in a day, which isn't a good idea if it's a particularly slow news day during the American summer. Then again, it doesn't make sense considering I finish most of them before lunch - and the rest I leave behind are commentaries. Thankfully, the folks at Seattle seem more impressed than usual with me, and have given me some degree of flexibility; it would've been worse if this was a year ago.

Bottom line is, our lives revolve around numbers, more so once we have to fend for ourselves, so we find ourselves strategizing with those numbers in mind. Act fast, never slow. My dad told me, a year ago, that it looks better on a resume if I got work closer to my graduation. I guess prospective employers will not buy it when you claim you traveled around the world after graduation, as a gift for yourself: you didn't find a job and that means you're a bad apple. It's worse if you have nothing to present - say, I didn't write for anything official until I got my present job, which doesn't look good if you're a media company looking for those who have "writing chops".

In a world powered by numbers, have slacked through the big wigs matters more than having slaved yourself for small fry.

So much for quality over quantity, for showing rather than telling, for all those things we learned back then, perhaps in an effort to make us feel good about our inability to do so many things. I think I should apologize for rushing this blog entry's ending - in the middle of writing this, some pretty big news broke out and I had to write it down for work. I was up for seven articles today. I did six because I took on something else. I ended up doing seven. I must look good now.

Believe it or not, I'm never comfortable with spending money.

I never really learned budgeting, but for some reason it's an innate skill. Or maybe not. Maybe it's more of a painful feeling when I spend too much money than my gut says I should spend. Maybe it's because it happens all in one blow - say, me spending P400 for that lunch at Pepper Lunch, which is a hundred bucks over my ideal budget for the entire day - or maybe it's because I just want to feel that comfort I have in seeing I have some leverage when I check my ATM.

Well, it must be a good thing, right? The one lesson everybody's told me the moment I took this job a year ago is simple: save, save, save. My aunt, who works for an insurance company, once gave me an impromptu lecture on keeping money in multiple bank accounts, apart from the one in my ATM and the one I have in hand. Perhaps exaggerated, but I think I got the whole idea down pat.

But the thing with having money is, once in a while, you can spend on yourself. You know, buy something you've always wanted to have. Relatives would even say I'm in a lucky position, because my dad is still earning very well, and technically is still capable of supporting the whole family. (I pitch in now and then. Right now I'm dooting the family's broadband bill.) But still, I like that feeling of leverage, the idea of having space to wiggle yourself in when things happen unexpectedly.

The past few weeks have been quite uncomfortable. I think I've spent too much. I bought Daniel Merriwether's album three weeks back, not anticipating that I'll be treating my sister (who's money-crazy, for lack of a better term) to lunch the day we watched the second Transformers film. That, plus the unusual string of expensive-than-usual lunches I had at work, which happened because either I wanted something new, or I wanted to get away.

Earlier this week my mother asked me if I wanted to buy a new watch. Not that my old watch - which I've had for six years or so - isn't working for me: in fact, the sentimental in me didn't like the idea of abandoning that tattered-but-working watch for something that looks more chic. It took me three days to get convinced - I half-heartedly agreed when my mom texted me, saying that I'd pay for it with the money I've been saving ever since I began working - and got home realizing that I'm getting a digital watch. I thought they're buying an analog watch.

So, right now, I'm wearing this sporty watch with temperature and UV sensors, which is obviously a step up from those watches we wore when we were young. Only, I'm not sporty. And that beeping sound, oh.

To make things worse, my Nike pair somehow decided to finally give up two days ago, which means I'm left with no pair of sneakers to use during rainy days. (My Adidas pair, which I bought over the holidays and cost me around five thousand bucks, isn't good for rainy days. You know, holes for air circulation.) So, right now, I'm seriously considering buying myself a new pair of shoes, after I bought myself a relatively expensive set of earphones to replace my recently-deceased ones, and I sketched out plans to upgrade my computer's memory and buy it a burner to replace that quick-to-die old one.

And I thought I told myself I'll buy a Converse pair. Not Chucks. The other one.

Worrying too much? Well, it's money, and at these times you should strike the balance between stimulating the economy and giving yourself some breathing space. Or, I've been working here for a year and I've yet to receive some incentive. Stupid management and their inability to give me my long-overdue appraisal...

But at least I'm not wearing an obviously expensive watch that doesn't work, like that girl on the shuttle that I saw this morning. That is something.

In my usual fits of office boredom, my mind wandered towards one of those nights on my way home.

Traffic at SLEX back then was still bad. I was leaning against the window, looking out at the gas station outside. It was dark, but I can see a girl come out of the shop and chase after a dog, Silhouettes, of course.

I remembered connecting that with what Katia told me a few months back. Since she left her job as a flight attendant, she said, she began working at a gas station. Since she was busy working then, I never got to ask what exactly she was doing there, although I presume it's a fairly significant position.

"Seaoil Merville," she said. Wasn't that the very gas station I was looking at that night?

Just yesterday did I finally tell her that; sometimes I get too bored to remember things that I should be doing. As always, she's busy, so the chat didn't exactly help me get rid of my boredom.

"Depends if the girl is wearing [a] Seaoil uniform or not," she said.

Of course, it didn't help. It was dark. But at least I got the gas station's location right: somewhere along the West Service Road, rather than being further towards the subdivision. (I should know. I have relatives and friends there.)

"Coolness," she responded. "That might've been me chasing Pepper, my dog."

"You have a dog!" I said. "Scary I almost got it right."

"My avatar has a dog," she pointed out.

There is a dog on the avatar. Black, furry, or however you describe it. It was, more or less, the same dog whose silhouette I saw that night. Could it be? Yes, I thought.

"Cool. That's pepper."

It's not as if I didn't know her anymore. We never really talked much since she graduated from UST, found herself flying to Seoul to train, and started going around the world in search of photographs and Manila quickturns. Maybe I just wasn't used to her saying "cool" a lot. Or at least that's not how I remembered her.

Still bored, my mind went to my email. Katia was responsible for giving me a GMail account, and I remembered our email exchanged about stuff. She was working at a call center then; I was a college freshman still crazy over Kizia. Incidentally, we were talking about her, more as a way to help her get past her own office boredom. Topics would change and the next thing we knew, we were discussing call centers, and her constantly clicking on "report phishing" rather than "reply".

Quite conveniently, all our emails to each other were compiled. There it was. An email on Valentine's Day two years ago, with her talking about some stupid guy. ("And that, is the end," she wrote on that long blog entry of sorts.) There were lots of blog entries from me, the stuff she wouldn't otherwise see, but I figured she'd be interested in reading while in between flights. Stuff about Sarah, mostly. And there was this one blog entry about Neobie, too, and Katia said she liked the entry.

What's most amusing was this one email she sent me, way back when we first met, sort of. It was another one of those Kizia-related emails - a "monologue", as she called it - where she talked about the big reveal and geeks and me being a normal kid after all, but still being "the male counterpart of man-haters".

I openly wondered if she remembered writing that email. She laughed - this was Christmas eve last year - and asked, "are you still a geek?"

I was listening to RockEd Radio yesterday, and there was this interesting tidbit from Gang Badoy. "We Filipinos have short term memory," she said, obviously going more political, although I was thinking of how quickly we forgot about these little stories that make us who we are, and how often we don't realize its impact on the things we do at this moment. I don't know. Short attention span? Wham-bam distraction feeds? Something else?

"I wish I could turn back time to those times where I really am so carefree and just floating and all I really have to think about is something as minor as Niko's thoughts on Kizia," she said six months ago.

Maybe there's life getting in the way, too.

"And to think I was not at the service road, but along SLEX," I said yesterday, still surprised that I somehow deduced it was Katia chasing after a dog that night. "Inside a tinted van."

"Coolness!" she merely answered.

I can't get used to it.

Is it bad to feel that urge? I mean, that urge?

I don't mean to be dirty, but you all know the classic story of society's pressures on a 20-year-old man like me. Perhaps it's precisely because I'm that age. I was reading through old blog entries yesterday, since I was finished early again, when I chanced upon something that Issa said two years ago: "date a nice girl na kasi."

I've been complaining about this for the longest time - the past year, the same subject - but I never really addressed the feeling. And, as time passes by, it gets more and more confusing. Consider that people consider physical contact as something unnecessary, and consider that it's something I actually need. It's a tug of war, literally.

And then there are the reminders. I guess this should be the subject of whatever newspaper contribution I'm thinking of, but in a nutshell, I feel torn by my age. Surrounded by younger people and older people, and feeling that no one is meant for you, just as you are surrounded by carefree college students noodling in their restaurant tables.

The past twenty-four hours, Issa's words have been echoing on my head - although not in her familiar-but-unusual deep voice, since we still have yet to meet personally - and, well, it's getting a little annoying. Oh, if only I'd stop entertaining that thought and start thinking that you don't really need that noodle factor to get through this world. And then everything that I've written before comes to mind. For one, it always seems easier when others do it. Or, I just don't like admitting my feelings, perhaps some ditty about weakness, perhaps about having to stick to it, whatever. I did tell you it was complicated.

That's just the emotional part. Wait till you hear me talk about the other things. Considering my history with discussing that kind of urge, well, I'll struggle with the idea that this is normal, and the idea that it is socially taboo. And with that, I have nothing else to say.

Oh, there's a reason for all those celebrity crushes.

The idea is, you're screwed.

To elaborate further, you're screwed despite doing everything to get yourself out of that situation. Whatever you do, you'll always do something wrong, and someone will always tell you that you fucked up the situation.

It all revolves around chances, anyway. We do things to get chances, or opportunities, or windows, whatever euphemism you have for it. There's a reason why we dress sharply, spray the right amount of perfume, say just the right words, read about the same things, laugh politely at every occasion, you get the drill. It's all supposed to improve your life, or at least make you happy. Get along with your bosses. Get that promotion. Get that toned abdomen. Get that car you've always hoped for. Get the girl, or get very satisfying sex without the strings. Or, at least, that's what those magazines want you to know.

Come to think of it. Back when we were kids, the one thing we wanted was to do things ourselves. Not exactly independence, but more of doing scary things and feeling confident about it, regardless of whether it stumbles spectacularly. There's a sense of satisfaction that you get after you, say, organize a party, or chat up with that girl at the corner of the bar. It's those small things. Soon we'll realize that those small things build up into bigger ones, the sort that makes us feel more accomplished than than smugness we initially set out on doing. It just ups the ante, but everything stays pretty much the same.

But there is no such thing as your own way. There's no way that what you're doing now will get you to those bigger things. Somewhere along the way, you're getting something wrong. Your tie doesn't match your entire outfit. You eat too much fatty foods. You shave the wrong way. You listen to Lito Camo's compositions rather than Ben Gibbard's. You complain too much about your colleagues. You drink too much beer. You stare at the breasts of the woman you're talking to.

Then again, your outfit is too monotonous. You freak the ladies out by eating solely carrot sticks and cucumber slices. You shave too much. You're being too much of a poser. You're not assertive. You're a killjoy during nights out with friends. You're too interested in other things.

Everywhere you go, there's always a hole. There's always a profile that fits you, and at the same time, there's always another profile that fits you: desirable, undesirable, not at all. There's always something that will subtract a point off you, and when you try to remedy that, there'll always be something that will subtract another point off you. It's the perfect image: a man who dresses sharply, who knows his way around the ladies and his bosses, who eats right, can fix cars, can bluff his way through anything, cares about sports rather than poetry, and perhaps is well-hung.

Again, the idea is, you're screwed. Whatever you do to give yourself that chance again, well, you'll never get it unless you become just like them. Have friends that own a restaurant. Go to the gym. Buy the perfect collared shirt. Say the right lines. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet and follow everything we say.

I don't know how this is supposed to relate to my situation. I'm supposed to incense myself with anger and frustration over my inability to talk to women and look good while at it, for one, or just be plain desirable. But where has all the substance in the world gone? Maybe that's what they want. Let go of it altogether.

And, because of that, I'm fucking screwed.

For a lack of something intelligent to say, I'll say that I've been very angry this week.

Or despising. Is there such a word as despising? Firefox isn't showing a red underline on that word, so there must be a word called despising. And there it goes again. No underline.

Or maybe it's vulnerable. Sensitive. Easily annoyed. Easily angered. It's not good if you're sick, they say, for it'll complicate your already complicated condition. I was sick for a couple of days, and I grappled with not having to go to work and feeling sick. Not that I enjoy work, although I'm aware that it completely contradicts what I just told Seattle the other day, which explains why I worked on one thing yesterday, which was a holiday.

I feel rattled. Three out of five days at home? Couple that with a lot of idle time in between - being stuck at home is apparently completely different than, say, sleeping inside a shuttle on the way home, or struggling to find something to keep you occupied when you finished all your work before lunch - and you've got a cranky me. So maybe the right term is cranky. At least no red underline will show up on that word.

I actually don't know why. Sure, there's the fact that you're wrested out of the (unhealthy?) routine that you do for five out of seven days in a week. The contradiction is, I actually liked the idea of doing something that you usually do in one set of circumstances under a different set of circumstances. And then come another set of thoughts that lead to that unhealthy set of thoughts. So I must be fucked up, then. Speaking of which, I launched a barrage of expletive-laden tweets a few days ago. I think that was Wednesday night, when my momentum got busted by another holiday. I was cranky.

I don't know if Ning will read this, and I know this will be useless, but I apologize, even if I said I won't.

Maybe I'm just really that messed up. If, for some reason, I always end up wondering about why everybody else is getting ahead of me, just when I try harder and get stuck deeper, then I must not be trying that hard. They must actually be correct, that I'm covering myself up and looking for attention at the same time, that I should be the one doing the effort, that I should try, and try, and fucking try some more. Well, if I did maybe I should've taken her and thrown off the window until she dies, right? Because she just fucking shuns me. See what I meant?

So, instead, I keep all that animosity deep inside, write them down in obscure paragraphs, and just try to distract myself while I'm doing the exact opposite. Which is, say, look through the rows of computers and fail again. And wonder where the old you has gone, and wonder whether the new you is just as unacceptable as the old you. And wonder all the same things that you've wondered about before, whether it's all worth wondering about again. I had nothing left to do with my idle time. All those downloads can only get me anywhere.

I hope Icka'd be around to explain what is happening to me, but I think I'd rather cry. And I can't, because, you know, it's socially frowned upon.

It was perhaps one of the worst assumptions he's made in his entire life.

The extreme view: he thought he had it made. There he was, hoping to get it right for once, perhaps going around it too quickly, but he knew this was the one, and after not following through for so many times before, he thought he knew enough to make the attempt, at the very least.

The not-so-extreme view: he's got someone to start anew with, and someone who seemed nice enough, someone who took things in stride, didn't take herself too seriously, quite open, that sort. And true enough, it was, and as all the similarities piled up, everything pointed to the extreme view. Well, maybe until he realized he can't hold that view, for it will come back to hit him hard. Or so he was told.

It was, perhaps, a case of getting cold feet. He returned to his old ways in roughly four weeks or so. Or he got a little more realistic. Be nice, but give space. As expected, nothing happened. Nobody can really tell what went wrong - maybe he clammed up too much that she didn't notice him, or maybe everybody else opened up to her that when he decided to open up, he got left behind. Or, as he felt - and as everybody else countered - she just didn't like him. It still meant he did something wrong, but he never went around to figure that one out.

So, in an oft-told story, he dug up every description he could get, and secretly played it against her. Ironically, he could never come up to her and slam all those in the face. He's still scared of confrontation, but he's starting just that. Or, he thought he dug up all those details, when he actually just inferred all of them. She's just keeping up appearances, trying to impress, to look smart, to look charming, and man, was he tricked. Never mind if the truth's very much the opposite. He's just convincing himself that she's not worth it.

It was one of the worst assumptions he's made in his entire life, thinking that the one moment they shared could start something. He looked at her, she looked at him, they laughed, and he felt disarmed.

One year later, he still is disarmed. He used to recover from these things pretty quickly. It hits a peak at the same point, starts dropping at the same point, and ends at the same point. But he's still at it, although it probably isn't his choice, or so he argues. He doesn't have anywhere else to go, he says.

That, or he refuses to believe that he's still falling in love, instead believing that he shouldn't. Or, he refuses to believe that he's no longer falling in love, instead believing that he should.