"Okay. I found my constant now. Yes, I get you, I get you. No wonder you're drifting off into space."

"I like drifting into space at times. It makes me feel weightless. Now this doesn't make sense."

"You're implying mindless euphoria, and I totally get you."

"I totally blame my lost remote control for that tweet. It was its fault for not showing up. Now I'm not making sense. But yeah, I like the mindless euphoria feeling."

"See? But gravity is a bitch."

"I totally agree. But if it wasn't for gravity, we wouldn't know the joy of free falling. The irony of life."

"Is falling fun? No, no, no. Air wooshing is fun for five minutes but when you're being torn apart, no."

"Oooh, falling is fun. I tried jumping on trampolines and jumping over diving boards. It's fun."

"I guess it depends on who's doing the falling, and how. Me, even if it was figurative falling, I don't like it."

"So I'm guessing you haven't fallen head over heels for someone."

"On the contrary. Just that it ends up, to keep with the metaphor, ripping me apart."

"I'm quoting something here. 'A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often or last too long.' Ahh, I need love."

"Ahh, it's lasted too long. I dread the conversation turning to this."

"Aww. Let's go back to talking about how the Jonas Brothers suck!"

My wallet isn't exactly a mess. Barring, of course, the many ATM withdrawal slips that populate the main pocket (and, if you're willing to know, get thrown out every time I get my salary) there isn't much to look at. There are business cards from people I don't even know. There are the usual IDs: my driver's license, my excuse for a company ID. There are two handwritten notes I'm keeping for posterity, but that's for another blog entry. And then there are two photographs. Just two: one's an ID picture of myself, placed on my wallet since it's got nowhere to go. The other one's an old family photo.

It's not really something to be ashamed about, but at one point, I felt it is.

College friends, of course, look through people's wallets, looking at photographs from high school and, as time passed, college itself. (Or was it my cousins? I might have them mixed up, but I'm sure the more mainstream, or comfortable, of people did exactly that.) I've been through that said. I can't remember whose photos I was going through, probably because I didn't really know who were in the photos I was looking at. The last I can say: she's a girl, and those were her high school friends. Studio photos were, of course, all the rage back then.

Okay. I might've mixed this up with my high school classmates. Take note, classmates, not friends.

I did not enjoy my first three months in high school. You know how that went. I was bullied, from the classroom to the corridors to the school bus, and months later I committed my first offense and was kicked out. Those three months began the process of my disillusionment with my generation. We were, I'll admit, very shallow.

"Patingin nga ng cellphone mo," this girl, Karla, said. She's a year higher than me, a little girl with a cute face and a very intimidating personality. She was one of those kids who bossed me around. (Who didn't?) But I was clueless, of course. I probably thought she's interested in my phone's contents. That's what we did then, before we started caring about our disappearing privacy. I gave her my stubby, fat phone, which contained text quotes from my mother - yet another fad at the time.

"Puro galing sa mom mo," she remarked. "Loyal ka?"

I actually felt insulted.

And since I only had a family photo on my wallet - I always had, nothing else - it felt like a badge of how far I am compared to my contemporaries. These are the people who go to Picture City at the Alabang Town Center and get their photos taken. Group shot after group shot, a reminder of fun times. During school days, they'd swap these photos. One would take a serious photo ("gusto ko yung serious") and another, a wacky shot ("mas fun!") but whichever way things go, the photographs become a social gathering all the same.

I had the very same thought seven years later. I was in college, in my final year. I just got the contact prints from my yearbook photo. There were ten or so of them, all poised for publication, at least until I rejected them because I liked one particular photo the best. What to do with the rest? Swap them, of course.

The photos I was talking about earlier, some were high school graduation photos, too. There'd always be a dedication on the back, either of a crazy, friendly kind, or if you prefer cheese, the romantic kind. "The past four years are my best because I spent them with you." It's quite obvious the tradition would continue in college, in perhaps the final graduation rites a lucky person would go through.

I only watched the swap happen. My mom took all my contact prints. She wanted to keep one of them but held off picking which one. We all just forgot about it. I don't even know where they are now.

No worry, because nobody was interested in my photos anyway. Nobody went to me and said, "swap tayo ng contact prints!" The tradition was for veteran members of the fraternity - not the kind in Batch '81: that was explicitly banned - and for a person who's looking in from the outside, well, it's a pretty painful experience. You just don't tell them it is a painful experience, because they'll press you for details just so they can mock you.

"Nasa mom ko lahat."

"Loyal ka?"

I took a lot of photographs in college. Everybody knows that. I was armed with either a bad phone camera or a digital camera (I've since inherited that) and took snapshots of anything and everything. "Candid photos, as always," I'd say whenever I brought out my camera. I'd say it to no one.

I've lost my only copy of the photos when my PC's hard drive conked out, but luckily I uploaded most of them on Multiply. Yes, the site everybody abandoned after a layout change. Many people still use it, especially here, so I wasn't surprised when the site announced that they've opened photo printing at a local chain. I was glad, actually. I can choose good photos of me with people - I rarely took photos of myself with people, but I have them - and have them printed and cut in wallet sizes and put them in my wallet, just so I can defend myself from other people. "Hoy, may kaibigan rin ako," as I bring out my wallet and show my duets and my groups.

The difference is, I don't exactly have permission to have those photos in my wallets. Imagine the potential awkwardness in carrying my photo with, say, Ranice on my wallet. Yes, we were pretty close in college. But that was back then. Nothing justifies having it printed specially for my personal consumption, even if it's my photo. I mean, who am I to them now? Right now?

Seven.

Just a seven. Which I don't really mind.

And there's a reason why I didn't ask about that seven. I mean, she was asking me. "Any questions? Any violent reactions?" And I didn't.

Okay. So I didn't really think about asking about that seven until when it was all over. The first thing that came to mind was, "I deserved it." No attempt to pass on the blame. No attempt to take the blame either. Just a simple "I deserved it" and nothing more.

But the more I think about it, I go, "why didn't you ask?" Because that was the confrontation I was looking for. There it was. A chance for me to ask about why things went downhill without me doing anything about it. Until now, my position is simple: "it's not my fault." It still isn't.

It's just a seven.

And where almost everything else is a twenty or a ten, a seven is better than a six, and definitely better than a four, which makes the situation absolutely hopeless. Not that I have any hope that it will get better. Not when you see it go, "he wants to stay because" of many other reasons that you didn't really write about.

When all you can do is think of stuff you want to push out of your head, you definitely deserve a seven.

For some odd reason, I ended up not writing a blog entry about my meet-up with Malia in Singapore. The bottom line was, she was having a hard time cracking the (boring government-controlled monopoly that is the) media industry there, and she decided to go back to the Philippines and surprise her closest friends here. I would've written an entry on that surprise, but my mood swings kicked in.

Not surprisingly, I didn't go "nandito ka pala, Malia?" when I got to the restaurant with Clarence on Thursday night. The big surprise was the arrival of people I have not caught up for ages. Sara, for one, is working as a flight attendant for Philippine Airlines, but her fashionista exclamations haven't disappeared. Kizia just graduated (I did know that, but my congratulations were in generic Facebook status messages, since there were just so many of them) and came from a job interview at a recruitment firm. The biggest surprise was Martin, someone I've seen only a couple of times after he left DLSU: he's preparing to defend his thesis at the Ateneo.

Jana, well, my apologies for not having an idea what you're up to lately. It's a failure on my part.

Jackie called it a "mini block reunion", although judging from the number of people who didn't make it - Jaja, Ale, Kaymee and Kat were busy with work - it didn't seem so small at all. There were ten of us (Jill and Ariane round up the final list) and, similarly, there were ten conversations or so. It's amazing to see how far we've come, although "far" is completely subjective at this point. As always, I acted the fly-on-the-wall part, but at least I was their pet fly. I was having a hard time taking everything in. I just remember laughing randomly, especially when Martin's quips came in and save the day.

I can totally understand where Sara was coming from. "Pwedeng isang conversation na lang?"

I don't think that will ever happen. Sure, we came from the same block and spent the good part of three years dodging bad professors and staying up for our projects, but we're totally different. Outfits, for instance. Malia came to dinner wearing a casual get-up, with a bright pink cap, one she probably bought in Singapore. Ariane, Kizia and Jill looked fresh from the office, although the last one upped the glam streak with the flower prints and the hair. Jackie and Clarence came like they were attending a fancy affair, although the latter just didn't have anything to wear. Martin and I looked pretty laid back, although I did not think of what to wear. Jana, perhaps to keep her background a puzzle, came in with a leather jacket. Then again, that's what you'd expect her to wear.

We ended up outside the Shang later in the night, a chance for a couple of people to whip out their cigarettes and take a puff. And a couple more. I haven't seen Jill smoke until that night, and the same goes with Kizia. Considering what came before, it was one of the more surreal things I've seen in my life. Please tell me I was just dreaming when that discussion about cigarettes whose tastes lie in between lights and ultra lights happened.

That said, it was still fun, never mind my claim that the real fun happened when I left. I was the first to bail, as I'd like to call it. But they all know I live far away. It was almost midnight when I got home. It was still the most fun I've had in a while.

"It's nice to do some catching up," Jackie said when I told her I got home. "Kahit di nakapag-usap yung iba, okay na yung fact na we spent time together, di ba?"

A part of me feels weird that the most fun I have is with my college friends. Yes, they'll be there, but I'm not there anymore. It was obvious with the ten simultaneous conversations at that outdoor table that we've taken our separate ways, and while there's contact, you can't rely on them forever. It sure felt weird bringing my inherited camera to work, and texting the wrong details to people, and calling Ariane many times to find out whether they're lost or not. It felt like a throwback to the past, and it's now what you want when you want to move forward and, in the words of all those career counselors, achieve your greatest potential.

It was still the most fun I've had in a while. So fun, in fact, that I didn't think about not replicating this at work... perhaps until now, two days later.

In a thrice-weekly, hour-long class, you are considered late if you arrive within twenty minutes after class starts. If you arrive later than that, you are considered absent. In a twice-weekly class, which is half an hour longer, you're late if you arrive within thirty minutes after class starts. Later, you're absent.

It was essential knowledge to anybody who ever studied in La Salle. Not everybody followed it - the professors sometimes had different sets of rules, from grace periods to sheer ruthlessness - but it was still a basic rule we all had to keep in mind. Well, at least until the four-day class week came into effect, after which the first half of the rule became moot.

Being a relatively good student, I tried my best not to be late to class. I was late a few times, the first being in an early morning class, where heavy traffic got the best of the bus I was in. But there was this one time when I arrived on campus thirty minutes after my first class started, making me technically absent. I took a different bus, and got slowly frustrated at how slow the driver was going, never mind traffic actually being light. To make things worse, it was international studies class, a subject that I totally loved and didn't want to miss.

I ended up staying outside the classroom until the class ended. My blockmates noticed me after, and asked me the most obvious question: "Pwede ka namang pumasok, ah. Bakit hindi ka pumasok?" Still frustrated, I actually cried, in front of Ariane and Clarence.

For last night's dinner-slash-block reunion, Clarence and I planned to meet at six in the evening, just after both our office shifts are done. She said she didn't have much to do anyway, since all of her projects are done. I didn't have many things to do, and wasn't willing to walk around the malls for ninety minutes alone.

But she wasn't contacting me on the day itself, so I had to call her up. "May ginagawa pa kami eh," she said. Something urgent, apparently, something I totally understand, since their clients are the fussy, clueless kind. "Mga 6:30, pwede?" I agreed. It was just a thirty-minute wait. I stayed in the office, doing absolutely nothing.

It was seven in the evening when I called again.

"Anong oras ba?"

"7:30 yung reservation."

"Mga 7:15, pwede?"

Sure, I went. I got so bored at the office so I decided to go down, Jonathan Goldstein in hand, and buy something at the nearby 7-Eleven. That, of course, took merely three minutes.

Fifteen past seven, I called Clarence again. No answer. Again. There was an answer. I don't remember which call was that, but she eventually answered. "Pababa na ako," she said. It was twenty past seven.

I told her to meet me at the street corner near our office. I actually thought she got confused, which is why I had to call repeatedly. There was a 7-Eleven behind her building. That's one possibility. She might be waiting at the 7-Eleven where I came from. That's another. I just didn't want to be late, especially since Jackie sent me a text message an hour earlier, asking me where I am.

I've always made it a habit never to be late for anything. I guess it comes with me living relatively far away. A job interview at eleven in the morning? I'll leave home at eight, arrive before ten, and despiar about what to do with all the time. Lately I've given myself some leeway (bah, I'm late for work by a minute, so?) but old habits die hard. And, waiting for Clarence, I was getting a little too jumpy.

She finally arrived, two minutes before the reservation. There wasn't really any need to rush, I know.

She explained that the client suddenly set up an emergency screening of sorts, that they wanted changes to the graphics, presumably changes on a whim, which meant they took forever to render, and the editors are frazzles, and they all start talking rubbish to each other. Today, there was absolutely nothing.

The plan was to have dinner tomorrow night, somewhere at the Shangri-la Plaza. Jackie, who was organizing the affair before she returns to Taiwan later this month, figured it would be close to where I work.

"Si Jill din, taga-Ortigas, di ba?" she asked me a week back.

Yes, I answered, remembering when a bunch of power outages affected the area and we were both forced to go home early. Oddly, I completely forgot about Clarence, who was working on the same street as me. She's just right there, and I forgot her.

I didn't really have to worry. Today, I learned that the list of attendees grew. Jackie mentioned ten names: apart from Ariane and Jill, there was Clarence, there was Kaymee, and there were a few others who I (also oddly) can't recall. More importantly, she had details on where and when the whole thing will be. And, apparently, I'm the only one she told about it. Cue me being reminder boy, much like frosh years.

Not really. I only sent text messages to the three people who I was absolutely certain still had those numbers. Well, I chatted with Ariane. I texted Clarence during my lunch break, asking if we could go to the restaurant together, since we're just so near to each other. Jill specially asked me to text her the latest developments. I gave her the details, and she asked me to pass on a joke to Jackie. "It's cheaper than other [restaurants] kaya!" she answered.

I went home, passing by the Shang like I always do, and figured out where the lunch will actually happen. I sent a text message to the three girls: the place is at the fifth floor, and Jackie reserved at half past seven. That's a full 90 minutes from the end of my shift, so I could either stay around at the office, or do something outrageous.

"Mag-isa ka ba dun?" I asked Jill. "Plano kasi kitang daanan. Wala lang kasi akong magawa."

As far as I can remember, Jill's office is on the other side of Ortigas. That's a twenty-minute walk, like when I went to watch Jason's film.

She didn't get my message. I had to clarify again. She finally did.

"Oh, it's okay. I walk to Ortigas area tanghaling tapat, in heels. I can manage."

I wanted to think chivalry has died. "Be a gentleman," they'd always tell you, but the many times I tried I get turned down, mostly in a nice way. Well, this is way better than standing around near the women's bathroom, waiting for a companion to come out - that's not accurate, but whatever - and getting snubbed. Well, it did feel like I was fishing for a goodbye or, this time around, a half-decent conversation.

And then I realize I gave the girls the wrong name of the restaurant. So much for fact-checking.

If I can sum up my life in a keyword, it would be this: non-existent.

Of course, that means nobody would be able to find me. Does anyone actually type in "non-existent" on Google? If it was non-existent in the first place then nobody would waste their time searching for it, unless said person has this strong feeling in the gut that it's somewhere.

Some people do have that strong feeling in the gut, but others just rely with what they see.

And no, this is not one of those blog entries where I complain about being out of everybody's radars.

I had a different thought, actually. This one came months ago, when I was browsing through magazines during lunch break. There's a shelf for the men's magazines, laddish or otherwise. There's one for fashion, one for celebrities, one for the geeks and one for the decent titles you can't exactly give a whole category to, like arts or travel. And there's one, of course, for the young girls that publishers - and really, anyone who writes for a living - see as a very critical demographic to impress.

I actually feel bad that "teenagers" to these people are just little girls who are concerned with bubblegum pop, some fashion and their crushes. I was sixteen for a year, guys, but I'm expected to live through reading nothing that is relevant to me. Oh, wait, that's FHM.

Anyway, you do notice all these magazines for teen females, right? Total Girl probably only has four girls rotating as cover subjects: Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez and Miranda Cosgrove. (I'm sure Ellie, being one of these so-called tweens, can shed light on this matter.) The subjects inside are presumably - probably, thankfully - a bit more varied, although I'm sure they're either Zac Efron, Justin Bieber, Taylor Lautner or, of course, Robert Pattinson.

Now, I sort of get it. I even write about the Twilight films for work, although we have really toned down on that over the past few months, and for a good reason: as one of my Seattle colleagues put it, anything that comes out of that front is four-fifths fake, and the rest, just a repeat of everything else. Really, everything has to have Robert's name just to draw attention. "He's kissing Kristen!" "He's kissing Kristen again!" "He's got Kristen pregnant!" (They really reported that last bit, all because there's a photo of her on the set of The Runaways with her belly showing, never mind that it's really meant to be that way.) Same goes with the magazines I browse through. There's always his face over there. There are books dedicated to regurgitating everything rabid fans - the same ones that almost got him killed on the set of Remember Me - already know. They all have his face over there. "It will sell!" some publisher might say in some board room. "Girls love Robert Pattinson." Months later, I see those commemorative Twilight magazines, sold at a 25% discount.

My point is, everybody relies on what they see. "I like that," they'll go. It's ingrained. "I like that just because I like that. If everybody likes it, it must be good, right?" So, people try to get other people's attention by adapting to popular tastes. A synth riff here becomes a Cobra Starship rip-off, and heavens know who that band ripped off. Same way everyone wants to be Robert Pattinson just to attract attention, the same way webmasters draw page views when someone searches for "Robert Pattinson photos", never mind that there's nothing new for fans, or anybody else for that matter, to see.

Those who try to make their own way, well, disappear into obscurity, eventually forced to take on the "non-existent" description, making them more doomed because nobody searches for "non-existent" on Google. I'm not saying I tend to go rogue in everything, but consciously being like other people just to gain their attention is not my thing. There's a reason why I wasn't blessed with a nerd-like knowledge of the American version of The Office.

Then again, I did do many things for exactly those reasons. Publicized it, even. Heavily. Didn't really change anything.

Yep, it was almost five years ago when this happened. I met up with Robyn in this covered atrium of sorts, with a lot of sign-up booths on the side. "Let's go together," she said, before realizing that we were in different sections, and thus we wouldn't go through the next two days together.

I think I was first in line on my sign-up booth. "What's your nickname?" the girl manning it said.

"Niko," I answered. "With a K, not a C."

The girl gave me a name tag, with my name written on it. Thankfully it was spelled correctly.

I stayed near that area, anxious as to who else will show up. Robyn was the only person I knew at the time, and her booth was quite far away. I couldn't get to her. I had to stay near my booth, as strangers started coming in one by one, people that I knew I would spend the next two days with, more so the next three years.

"Nice meeting you. I'm Niko. Saang school ka galing?"

I don't know what happened to that lesson since. Well, it wasn't really a lesson. It was just all that I was: pretty sociable, and pretty brash. A couple of hours later, our group of 45 people would see me as this fun, if not noisy, future classmate, the sort of guy who would take the lead in things. I'll admit, I wouldn't have been that if I didn't act so excited, if I didn't say hello to everyone and asked them about their high schools with interest. I think that's why I ended up becoming a strong contender for block president. It all began when I slowly became my noisy self at LEAP.

Things didn't really go as well as those first two days. I did have friends, few and far between, but for some reason I was just the guy who took the lead, and not the guy you'd want to hang out with. That, or I didn't hang out. "Sa Cavite pa ako," I'd usually say, not really used to the idea of going home late. I can't really help but feel bad when I see this one person I was (then) oddly interested in laugh with other people. I was fun, but I was noisy, and people didn't want noisy people. They want fun people, and just fun people, which is why I never had a steady group of friends in college, the sort that you'd automatically be groupmates with in class activities, or the sort that you'd hang out with after the day ends.

Okay, so I did something wrong. Back during my frosh years, I was the sort that was, to say the least, had issues. Nobody likes people with issues. Nobody even bothers approaching people with issues. Thus, I knew that having issues is wrong - wrong in the ethical sense - and that you have to change if you want people to come to you. Luckily for me, some people came to me, and I had friends who were nice enough to tell me what was wrong with me. "Hinaan mo lang boses mo," they'd say so many times. "Masyado kang malakas magsalita."

More or less, it meant I should stop being so aggressive.

Two years later, I had a crash course in being aggressive. It was the career workshop. A mock interview. A mock panel interview. It went well, until the facilitator told me that I was too passive. The seat I was in was a bit far, relatively far, from the panel. "Tinitignan yan ng mga employers minsan," he said, before suggesting that we do it again, only this time, I should ask if I can pull my seat closer to them.

I didn't want to pass off as a cocky person, because I knew nobody liked people who were very straightforward. I surely didn't like one of my classmates then. "Dude, are you gay? Because, really, if you are, I don't mind." And then he mentions Sudoy's and Martin's name and I knew he was presuming things, and he felt absolutely macho when stood beside me.

In synthesis: be aggressive, but not cocky. People like fun people, but not noisy people. It took me three years to figure my approach out, but it did come at a cost. I didn't have a group of friends I constantly hung out with, like everybody else in my block - and, true enough, the rest of my batch - who wasn't shunned to death in a previous case. (I did feel shunned to death at one point. First year, after the recollection, when I said I was being untrue all this time. Clarence should know the whole story. I can't be bothered retelling it, but I remember sitting by the lobby, just waiting for class to come, feeling terrible.) I was invited to lunch, perhaps because they had no other choice or because I was already there (in hindsight they're the same reason), and I ended up eating while listening in to conversations that the folks I was with were having. All the inside jokes, all the obscure references, all the stories I felt I didn't have the right to know.

But you can't be cocky, so you might as well not force things to happen. Let things go where they ought to. It was a lesson - I haven't learned it - that I just picked up from Valerie. "Not everybody will choose to be your friend," she said. But I thought we were all entitled to this.

That was pretty much what my horoscope said today. I was inside a bank, waiting to have my check encashed, reading the comics, trying hard not to laugh so hard. Minutes before I asked the lady beside me, if she could pass that bit of paper to me. She picked it up with two fingers, like it was dirty or something - then again, newspapers smudge fingers - and I took it, two fingers. This should be easy, I thought. I'll just be friendly. "So how are you?"

She seemed too busy. She kept turning her head around.

Two things to my credit. One, I cleared my head. Gone were the presumptions, that I'd be too cocky, although there were times when I just butted in and got nothing. But that's what I did before, and it worked. Then again, it worked before, not today. Two, I was being friendly. I got surprisingly sensible conversations. "I am now a Herrera." "Fake Locke is the Smoke Monster." "Italian-American rin ba yung nagbato ng table?" But you certainly know that it is too late, when you find yourself eating expensive ice cream and just keeping quiet while your companions - loosely - laughed. I knew it was too late. Not that I had expectations or anything - I absolutely didn't have any - but I knew there's no chance I'd be able to crack the code and, at least, be someone.

"It's more of a refresher," I told Icka. "Like college. Only there are feelings involved, whatever those are."

I didn't really know what those are. But I sure felt like crying - not hysterical, but more poignant, painful, actually painful, helplessly painful - when the goodbyes were said that she left like I wasn't around, or perhaps, like I was just some pesky fly on the wall, stalking. You just know you screwed yourself badly. You just know your approach to things - letting things take its course - just wasn't working. And to that, I simply said, oh well. These things take forever to get replaced.

If all else fails, act as if nothing happened. Catch is, you still wrecked that vase, your mother will notice something's missing in the living room, and you will start panicking when she asks questions. The truth will come out, and you'll get two long bruises in your buttocks, thanks to sheer force and a pretty large block of wood.

In other words, there is no use hiding what you feel.

The point, of course, is time. It's been, what, sixteen months since the biters? Samantha and I don't even talk that much anymore, and we haven't been at each others' necks. When we talk, it's not about "slim" nor "shady", but more about how she's living up to an old, unsuspecting three-year-old nickname. Sixteen months ago they were the boone of my existence. Sixteen months later, uhh, who are they?

But there is another point: space. Within those sixteen months there was virtually no communication. People were removed on Facebook lists - all but one, at least, something about pride - and none of their happy adventures filtered through. Out of sight, out of mind, much like Jenn admitting that she doesn't miss Glee just weeks into the four-month recess. Or maybe me, too, since I've been busy with Lost, thinking about the possibilities. Two timelines! Every bit of interaction erased! Or is it? Because there's time, and there's space. They're not totally separated by it. Intrinsic connections. They will never get over what they have to get over with.

(I should've preceeded that paragraph with a spoiler warning.)

The last time this happened, it was just two months in. I was totally pissed. Totally pissed. The next time it will happen, it's been eleven months in, and nothing much has changed, except perhaps for useless savings in system resources and a worsening case of paranoia. You saved yourself from being shut out, but you get more shut out in return. "Sorry, inside joke." That should've been insulting. That should've been absolutely insulting. But I wasn't insulted, and I thought that was wrong, and here I am, dreading to sleep because it means waking up and going to work and leaving early and putting into swing all those unwarranted scenarios I played out in my head last night.

"So how are you?"

"Okay lang." Then she gives you crickets in a cage. "Live with it."

If all else fails, act as if nothing happened. Catch is, you still wrecked that vase, your mother will notice something's missing in the living room, and you will start panicking when she asks questions. The truth will come out, and you'll get two long bruises in your buttocks, thanks to sheer force and a pretty large block of wood. But it's just a vase, and two long bruises. Soon it will be gone - at least if what remains of the vase is cleaned up.

Remember, it's just lunch with a colleague, an attention whore and a cold hard bitch. It can't go wrong, right?

"I think... savior mo ako. O kaya... tulay. O kaya... way."

I honestly didn't understand what Piyar was prattling about. This was a few days after my blog entry about successful people, and since I mentioned her, it was pretty convenient to think that this was someone referring me to a job opening. Not a bad excuse, considering what she said after.

"May show ako ngayon. Dating game. Gusto mo?"

"Aalis ka na?"

Of course, I was wrong.

"Send me the details and I'll consider."

But I didn't really realize that I was wrong - or, better yet, something was wrong - until I felt things were happening too fast. And then there's this life lesson I should've picked up eons ago: it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

"Hanap ka sa YouTube ng videos ng 'take me out'."

Not really helpful. I knew that the first thing I'll see is a video for Franz Ferdinand's breakout single.

She gave me a link.

She wasn't kidding. Or I missed a very important detail: she's talking about a dating show. If I caught that I would've understood what she was prattling about, but instead I remember staring at the video with this surprised look on my face. So this was Take Me Out. Some dating show that aired in the UK, which I haven't heard before despite me being a British media geek of sorts, perhaps because it's a television show on ITV.

"Dating show?"

"Yup. Medyo. Pero fun."

Medyo, meaning it isn't exactly a dating show, in the tradition of Edu Manzano's Love Bytes, with a searcher, three searchees, and an electronic computer whatever it is. More of a reality show, as I realized just now.

"What about this?"

"Join!"

"Ako? So you're going to pimp me out? Chosko."

"Eh di ba matagal ka nang naghahanap?"

Well, yeah, kinda. Reading through the show's premise, I knew I'd make a fool of myself more than whoever else actually has the guts to join what seems to be a local version of this show. Take Me Out is a daring new dating show designed to put the powers of female intuition to the ultimate test. Daring, meaning, each week eligible bachelors are lowered onto the stage. Each girl stands behind a podium with a light on. If she doesn't like what she sees, she presses her buzzer and it's lights out, bye-bye baby, no date. Pretty much like a dating reality show with a survival element to it.

"Medyo hindi ako naghahanap lately. Nawalan na ako ng confidence sa sarili. So no?"

"Awwww. Sayang."

"Malabo ang aking dynamic. Kung makahanap ako, at nakahanap ako, hindi ko magagawa ang second step. Sayang lang oras mo."

Looking back, that wasn't the best way of turning back a girl's... I think I should not call this an advance. Invitation? Still, judging from this exchange alone, I will fail.