I never expected me posting a photo of all the campaign materials I collected during four years of Shale Campaigns would trigger a shockwave of sorts amongst the people I met along the way. Folks from the yellow side - I'd like to think the reds have this problem too, but they didn't really comment on that collection - would beg me to sell them the pamphlets, because they've somehow lost their copies. In Mia's words, "I know a lot of people who's be willing to pay a good price."

I found that hullabaloo really odd. Sure, Ge's predicament - of termites eating his SPOA collection - was understandable, but the rest losing the very things they worked hard for felt really weird for me. I mean, they're the ones who drafted the contents, laid out the photos, had it printed and gave it away to supposedly apathetic students. Now, the candidates, the core and the ground workers don't have reminders of their hard work? They themselves?

No, I don't mean to sound angry. I meant it to sound a bit ridiculous. But honestly, for someone with an ego as needlessly battered as mine, the idea of people actually coveting something I own - something that others would consider as trash - warms my heart. But I still insist on my stand: they're my only souvenirs from four years of being "doggedly passionate" about student politics, and I'm keeping it.

That quote came from Y2K, who texted me last night, asking if she could borrow two of my SPOAs. Now, she was a candidate for two elections, and was part of the core for another one (if I remember correctly), and she sums up the very argument I made two paragraphs ago. Still, I obliged, because she's coming to Ortigas to get them from me. Again, it warmed my heart.

Or maybe not. She's headed to Ortigas anyway. She's headed to L'Oreal, the place where she used to work, to claim her back pay - apparently she left her job there a few months back.

In usual Niko fashion, I was texting her to confirm every little detail. I didn't know when she'll make it to Megamall, the designated rendezvous - I didn't know whether I'll have to leave early for lunch, or leave the office a second time to meet her. I know, it gets annoying at times, trying to confirm everything so I can plan how it will all go in my head, but that's how I do things. We set our meet-up at one in the afternoon,and later revised it to half past one. Nothing changed in my routine, then.

At twenty past one, she sent me a text message. "Saglit lang," she said. "Got caught for 'swerving'."

I felt a little antsy. Not that I wanted to get the meet-up over with - why would I? - but because the routine is slowly starting to crumble.

Well, not really. Turns out she was apprehended in front of the mall - she wasn't supposed to turn right when she turned right. I don't know what happened exactly after that, but we still met at the designated time. My plans didn't really go bust: in fact, I even got to our meeting place before she did, and I managed to pull off a surprise by suddenly walking beside her as she went to the ATM. Again, in usual Niko fashion.

Turns out she wasn't exactly borrowing my SPOAs for posterity's sake. After she left L'Oreal, she got a part-time job at a big advertising agency, and while she enjoys the benefits of being a freelancer, she's still out to get a full-time job. And anybody who works in advertising knows that, in her words, "a three-page resume isn't enough" - so she decided to create a picture book outlining her life. Since she was never fond of taking photos of herself, she decided to bring a lot of stuff to the scanners: her Santugon IDs, her seminar passes, Drea's Ad Congress pass, her high school yearbook (it's a privilege, she says, to be able to see photos of what I call "13-year-old Mara" and "teddy bear Sarah"), and my SPOAs.

I'm still surprised, though, that she left L'Oreal. Everything about it seemed perfect: the way she came to their attention, the way she got a job offer before graduating, the way I thought you couldn't possibly ask for more.

"It wasn't a job worth waking up every morning for," she told me later. "I still wanted to go to advertising."

"At least you know what you want to do," I said.

"Everybody says that."

I can't get a grip of the fact that I don't know what I want to do. Sure, I like writing, but I feel stuck where I am, and I feel like I can't really pursue writing as a career - especially in a world where knowing people matters more than being good at what you do. (More so when you see the same names writing the same things on different magazines, while sipping the same cocktails and rubbing elbows with the same circle of friends.) I told Y2K that I've been looking for jobs lately, and lots of it - from copywriter positions to the occasional magazine job. I don't think I told her that, if all else fails, I'll give marketing a try, even if I don't really know much about it - or, at least, I didn't study it in school, unlike her.

"I know what you feel," she said. Over and over again. She'd insist that we both shared the same sentiments at one point: feeling "rusty" after quitting her job, feeling that she won't be able to pursue her dreams again, feeling that she's stuck where she is. Pretty much what we'd all call the quarter-life crisis. I figured that if it is really what we're going through, then I'd die at age 84, and her, at age 92. We have lots of time.

But I don't really feel that way. I don't have a plan, sure, but it feels very much like earlier this afternoon, when I got her text message about being apprehended by a traffic enforcer. I was antsy. I wanted to do what I set out to do. I didn't want to spend many minutes going around the same magazine stores and feeling really insecure about who I am - a person who turned down every opportunity to advance, in hindsight, because of that deadly focus on academics - and who I want to be. If that's who I want to be. And there's not enough time to change directions, or even figure out where you're headed. This is the path, no matter what.

In usual Niko fashion, I proceeded to quietly drag myself down. At least she knows what she wants to do.

I bought an envelope, presuming she'll take the SPOAs home. I didn't know she'll have them scanned at the mall - that's all fine, since it gave us time to talk, time that we didn't have when we bumped into each other in Boracay. In the end, we accomplished what we both set out to do, unwittingly or otherwise. We left the shop with a revelation - that I, oddly, get confused between "talyer" and "tailor" - and went up to the third floor, where we exchanged hugs before she left for her next stop. It happened to be, by the way, a car repair shop. Yes, a talyer. And she didn't get her back pay yet.

I realized I spent an hour and twenty minutes on lunch break. Not that anybody's looking for me. There is, after all, a lot of time to get to the work I left behind.

"Except for a feminist classmate that I have who says men are the 'demons in a girl's life' and that men are 'suffocating', you're the only one who told me that outright," Katia said in an email four years ago. "Am I so bad for finding this uncommon? And a bit weird? Well, maybe just because I'm the exact opposite kaya I can't really see things the way you see it. What's weirder is you actually like somebody right now naman so I can't say that you're the male counterpart of manhaters."

I don't remember what exactly I told Katia that time. The first time I read the email I had this puzzled look in my face: when exactly did I tell her all those things? Reading the email again, I still can't remember what I said, but it's probably something about me making a certain person's life complicated because of all those guessing games. (I bet Kizia didn't bat an eyelash when I buckled under pressure back in first year.) But that's beside the point. Yes, I'm a guy, and I believe we are the inferior gender.

I'm not really sure how I reached this conclusion. All I know, from the two decades I spent professing love and trying to get some back, is that we guys live for love. So much, in fact, that the moment we don't get it, we pretty much slow down. So we resort to, uhh, temporary measures, and when that isn't enough, we reach a halt. And after all this, we're not supposed to buckle under pressure. Oh, we're strong, and we don't care if this and that dumps me. Plenty of fish in the sea! All while the ladies have slumber parties and talk about issues.

Simply said, guys are a pretty insecure bunch. You'd be hard-pressed to find a guy who managed to be successful while staying single. More often than not, they had that so-called inspiration, or worse, they managed to snag someone as a product of their success. A trophy, in other words. And once they get it, they get really protective of it - nothing wrong with being protective of your special someone, of course, but most of the time it ends up being just what Katia's feminist classmate said: suffocating.

Remember the story of my one-time classmate who unfollowed me on Twitter because her boyfriend "gets jealous"? I thought it couldn't get much worse, but it did.

I met Hazel during the ACB4 auditions - an ill-fated attempt, since I was three months away from graduation - but we only caught up with each other a few months later, when I found her online, along with a photo that I was oddly looking for. Over the next few months, we added each other up on Facebook, and eventually started talking on Twitter, exchanging trivialities about Scarlett Johannson and Heather Morris. And then one day I asked for her phone number - an indirect, and definitely, impersonal plea.

I got the number in an oddly impersonal manner.

The following morning, I sent her a text message. She replied with, simply, three question marks. I was honestly freaked out.

She sent another message anyway, and we ended up talking about a few things. Those conversations were short and considerably intermittent. One day I greeted her good morning in my usual manner - "mawning!" - and she replied the same thing. The following day, she sent a greeting, and I joked that it's spelled as "merning" on that instance, so she obliged. And yes, I did think there was something unusual with the text messages, because they were too straightforward, but what did I know?

Turns out I wasn't texting her all along.

I don't exactly remember how we reached that conclusion, but I remember asking her and totally misunderstanding her explanation. Something about her boy having access to her phone. Who the hell gives their household help access to their mobile phone? I thought. You mean this guy gets your phone when you're not around and texts me? It's too ridiculous an explanation, I figured, so when she asked me to delete her number - on Twitter this time - I decided not to.

This weekend, I got a text message from that number. "Sometimes it's easier to say that you're fine instead of having to explain all the reasons that you're not," it said. Suddenly this guy is sending me inspirational quotes, possibly still masquerading as Hazel. Even more surprisingly, the quote tied in perfectly with my recent anxiety.

"Explain it to me nga," I asked her. "What happened along the way?"

"I have no idea why he's texting you," she said. "Pasensya na, ha. Nagseselos yun dati eh. Ngayon, ewan ko kung bakit tinetext ka pa din. Sorry."

"Ano nga ulit nangyari? Hindi ko talaga maintindihan."

"Yung ex ko yun."

All along, I was texting Hazel's ex-boyfriend.

"Eh, he's got access dati sa Twitter and Facebook ko. Eh nagseselos na madalas kitang kausap dati via Twitter, so ayun. Pasensya talaga, Niko, ha."

Okay. First of all, why does he have access to her Twitter page? Sure, it's one thing couples do, but usually when they're married and all, when the term conjugal property comes into the picture. And sure, when you're crazy in love with someone - whether you're a guy or a girl - you tend to do silly thing that you'd regret when things go terribly wrong.

But that's something easily solved with a change of passwords. I'm sure that's an oversight - and something you can let slip compared to my second question: why did he have to masquerade as her ex-girlfriend to check out a guy she's talking to constantly? More so, why me, a guy who isn't exactly known for acting on feelings? I mean, my younger brother is this close to having a girlfriend - something is obviously wrong with me.

Now, I barely know Hazel, so I wouldn't really tackle anything particularly personal. I don't know what caused the split, and I don't care what did. But think about this. Guy and girl splits up. Guy can't take split-up. Guy sees girl with another guy. Heaven knows who that guy is, he thinks, so he does, well... this.

"What's with me and girls' boyfriends?" I tweeted earlier this morning.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it's not your fault," she replied.

"It's this all over again," I said, telling her about the girl who unfollowed me because her boyfriend will get jealous.

"How familiar. It's not a crime to be friendly, di ba?"

"As far as I know. Why are guys, me included, so insecure? I'll really believe we're the inferior gender."

"There you have it. My manhaterism reason number one."

She's this self-described manhater, by the way. She pretty much believes we suck. I always thought it's the default position of girls who were treated badly by the men in their lives - and they do have a point, especially when we believe we can fool around and expect loyalty in return. The surprising thing is, I believe the very same thing - and yet I'm out looking for love, more or less.

"It all makes sense me to now. Manhaterism. Blog entry!"

"Hey! Credits, ha!"

"Why will I take credit for it anyway?"

"I coined the term manhaterism! I ought to be given proper credit for it!"

"I don't have a reason to say I coined the term."

But boy, I obviously wish I did. Yes, I'm a guy, and guys are this insecure pieces of meat that want to be somebody to someone solely for their happiness. I totally get it now. Oh, by the way, that was another conversation...

I always pass by the Shang on the way home. I always pass by the second floor atrium, where something always happens - either I see familiar faces seated on the fountain, or something as morbid as this.

More often, of course, there are the planned events. And since the Shang is not your usual mall, the events are not your usual pop-by-and-see-what's-going-on events. Sure, Ariane and I once did that, when Basil Valdez had a concert and we decided to kill time by watching from the fourth floor, already squeezed with people who don't have tickets.

That is, perhaps, the only exception to the rule. More often than not, the events held there are the really upscale kind. A choir recital, a fashion show, or the usual cocktail party, celebrating the launch of some exhibit or some film festival. Sure, I can view the art at my own choosing, but the launches are something else altogether. Once the barriers go up, you know it's for the people who supposedly worked their asses off to be considered "ridiculously well-off". Or the people who get to tag along.

Yesterday was the launch of the Taiwan Film Festival, and that meant the barriers again. Not that I mind, although weirdly there were people standing outside the barriers, watching the people inside the atrium proper
rub elbows and drink wine. People-watching? I thought. Really?

And then I remembered something that Celine tweeted a few hours prior. She said something about going to the film festival's launch. I don't know what she does for work, but she always gets to do these things.

I ended up people-watching myself.

Well, more of walking around the perimeter of the barrier, pretending to nurse what became an actual headache. (Some do say you only need to walk it off to get things cleared up.) I thought I saw her at one of the cocktail tables, chatting with other people. Turns out she was at the buffet table, getting food. It was beside the elevators, and I found myself somewhat hidden by that elevator, looking at the gap, and seeing her laugh a bit. I thought I'd call her, but I'd look stupid, and I realized whatever I impulsively did would be totally inappopriate to the event.

That was perhaps one of the saddest thoughts I ever hatched.

While waiting for whoever else will show up on our block reunion, my conversation with Jackie and John drifted towards our options after graduation. Well, it's been two years since we graduated, but we still have our options, right? John's hoping to take post-graduate studies, if I remember correctly. Jackie, of course, is already taking up her masters in Taipei. I didn't have any immediate plans - I felt if that happens I should be paying for it - but if I do pursue further studies, I thought I should veer away from communications. Seems I was struck by what Jackie said: "gusto ko nga sana kumuha ng international marketing after this."

I flick through magazines and see the same old names, doing many things for many masters, because apparently that's the only way to really survive if you decide to pursue writing. Maybe surviving, in this case, means being able to afford a laptop, a car, and several cocktails a month - but not a love life.

I look at Celine and realize that my idea of success is terribly off the mark.

I also realize that there's no way I could change that idea of success. I guess I'm predisposed to it. Maybe I really have to move away from my original "plans" - well, I don't have any plans, so to rephrase that, maybe I really have to move away from my pipe dreams (Jeany, thank you) and start doing anything to be comfortable. To be successful, relatively. Right now, I don't think I'll make it.

Hey there, Gwen.

Have you ever struggled with carrying a tray full of food from a stall in a food court, navigating the space with lots of people, and getting to your table safe and sound? Have you ever tried doing it alone - which means you have to navigate the space, already loaded with lots of people, while looking for an empty table to settle into? Yes, exactly.

I'm used to that - I've told you many times before, I have lunch alone - but today was particularly hard. The stall I ordered food from had run out of those combo plates, so my meal came in three separate plates rather than one. Throw in my utensils, a plastic cup full of iced tea and a larger-than-usual bowl of beef broth, and you can imagine how slightly scared I was.

I managed, obviously. I had to look for a table, but since I eat lunch at past one in the afternoon - well, I eat lunch that late to avoid the lunch crowd. While it hasn't exactly dissipated at the stalls, it has at the tables, and finding an empty table was easier. So far, so good.

Well, not really. And no, I did not spill my iced tea on my soup, or on my bowl of smoky sauteed munggo. (Mung beans, whatever.) But for a while I thought I might lose my composure, when I found myself closing in on a table, and finding myself staring at a girl nearby.

Yes, this story is incredibly pathetic, yes, yes.

Now, the girl was seated alone in one of those big tables, the ones clearly made for four, as opposed to my table, which was half its size but made to seat four anyway. She was wearing this white top, and she was busy texting with her clamshell phone. Her hair was black and straight - well, not that straight, maybe a little frizzy. And it wasn't that long - maybe up to the bra line. (What's a cleaner way of describing hair that's in between shoulder-long and waist-long?) She had bangs. She had small eyes, and she had a round face. Not as round as you think, mind you. She's taller.

What's pathetic about this is the way I gathered all that information in the three seconds she was in my sights. And for some reason, that stayed stuck when I sat down on my table - a couple of rows away from her's or something - and consciously decided to sit where I can't see her. Well, not exactly, because I saw some guy approach the table with a tray of chicken plates and drinks, wearing a black shirt and black-framed glasses. I figure he was her boyfriend.

I enjoyed my meal, thank you very much. If you ever drop by Ortigas you should drop by. Balay Ilocos doesn't just serve Ilocano food: it serves home-cooked comfort food. I still don't know what they put in their munggo, though. They don't have it often but, man, it's good.

While going through my somewhat unruly magazine collection, I realized that the two copies of GQ I bought were released on the same month.

Two years ago, I found myself killing time at that humongous Fully Booked branch at Bonifacio High Street. I was going through the magazines when I chanced upon the (then) latest issue of the magazine, with Megan Fox on the cover, wearing a bikini and sticking her tongue out, on a stark off-red background. And it was a thick issue. The snap thinker in me figured it'd mean a lot of things to read during those nights when I couldn't easily fall asleep - but of course you're spending half of your six hundred bucks on advertisements that aren't relevant to you. I bought it, and realized that the cover photo was hot - and only the cover photo. The rest was a bit off-putting, pretty much what Megan is.

A year ago, I found myself killing time at some magazine stall at the Alabang Town Center, thinking to myself, I will buy a magazine since I've run out of things to read. The latest issue in stock had Olivia Wilde on the cover, and while she's someone I never really, particularly cared for, I decided to buy the issue anyway. Yes, there was a point when I told myself "she's hot, isn't she?" - and that thought kept me through the realization that at the time, there was a much newer issue. (I don't watch Mad Men, so I'm not really familiar with January Jones.) The issue was much thinner, but the cover article was interesting, if only for the juxtaposition of seeing Olivia almost naked and reading about her marriage to an Italian prince. She's married to an Italian prince! What the heck? I almost wrote about it, but the thought never really came to me.

I'll admit, I buy these magazines when there are ladies on the cover. I'm paranoid enough to worry that if I buy a magazine with a guy on the cover, people will think differently. (Then again, I bought the Esquire issue with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover, if only because of Anna Torv's pictorial.) But since these magazines - the sort you find in those posh barbershops, the ones not usually read because the nearest copy of FHM is gone - often have men on the cover, I don't really buy them often. (Apart from the cost, of course.) Now, rest you think I'm a superficial fellow - and maybe I am - I'll say that I buy those magazines anyway when I think the contents are absolutely interesting. Thus, the DiCaprio issue.

Back to those two GQ issues - both of them, I bought in October. And, with that month coming near, I started wondering whether they'll have an interesting cover this year - one that'd warrant me buying it.

And then I read something about the magazine having a photo shoot with Olivia Munn.

That, of course, is no surprise. I've pretty much written about her hard-to-describe hotness in this blog's one-thousandth entry. The idea of having said hotness on paper, rather than online, is irresistable to me. And then I thought that it's quite possible for the magazine to feature her on the October 2010 issue. That'd keep the streak and make me a (really) happy magazine reader.

Writing that paragraph made me feel absolutely pathetic. Okay, I know, there's nothing wrong with writing about celebrity crushes - the reason I've done so, on the aforementioned blog entry - but there's something about having a crush on Olivia that makes me, well, pretty uncomfortable. It's not because she's effortless. And it's not because she's quite a crazy fellow - crazy and funny and biting at the same time. But I can't get myself to watch Attack of the Show when she's on. Watching her do the show suddenly doesn't mean paying attention to what she says, and I'd like to think I'm beyond that.

It all happened when I found myself in another bookstore, browsing a copy of Bloomberg Businessweek - not necessarily because she was there, mind you. I've been browsing that magazine for the design: it just happened that they had her as a "case study" of sorts during their recent popularity issue. Which I, of course, read. Which, of course, made me sqiurm. And more so.

Six years ago, Olivia Munn arrived in Hollywood with fading ambitions of making it as a sports reporter and set about deploying her good looks in promotional campaigns for sodas, sneakers, and rock bands. None of it got her anywhere. Things started to change only when she found a niche market to target: nerdy guys. "The people who control popularity," says Munn, "are the people who are not popular."

Now, now, I openly embrace my being a nerd. I know too much about things not everybody cares about, and I don't really spend my days hanging out with people. But that line didn't really do me favors. There I was, a guy fresh out of work, going through the magazines to find something to read, because I choose to have some substance in my down time rather than race to be wasted. Me, a guy who, despite many invitations, never really hung out with anyone - maybe because I'm just not available, but mostly because people probably think I'm that unappetizing mix of boring and obnoxious. (There's a reason I try not to talk about myself too often.) When you're out, I'm in my bedroom, asleep, my mind probably preventing that Olivia Munn person from infiltrating my dreamscape. Not really helping, that description.

It's ironic, really, that urge for acceptance - the urge to be accepted by everyone, and most importantly, the urge to be accepted by yours truly. Then again, this world treats "be yourself" like trash.

I was at the bookstore this afternoon when all of this came to my head, while I was browsing the latest issue of GQ, the one with LeBron James on the cover. And then I realize that the Olivia Munn pictorial was in that issue. In one page of that issue. That printed goodness, limited to one page - and I know for a fact that there are at least four photos. Maybe I am superficial, after all - I told myself I won't buy that issue on the power of my disappointment alone. But we'll see what next month brings. Yes, I am a hopeless nerd.

It will take me a while before I can say I'm really confident of my driving. Despite my weekly trips to the car wash, I still mess up the brakes when I hit the humps, and I still need someone to spot me when I park the car in the garage. But I'd like to think I'm getting a little better. A little better. I know I'll take a huge step towards driving maturity when I no longer yell something like "I survived!" once I return home.

That's pretty much what I did this morning. I headed to the car wash by myself: I usually head out with my dad, because we have two cars to have washed. Today, things went a little different: he was busy watching tennis, and I asked him the car wash question at the wrong time. On the upside, I wasn't going "will I survive?" when I pulled out the car and took the two-minute drive to the car wash.

I know I said "car wash" many times in those two paragraphs. I'm running out of things to write about, don't you think?

Anyway, I waited a bit, got the car into the washing area, and waited across the street, seated in one of those tattered monobloc chairs. When the car's almost done, I start hoping that no other cars arrive and wait for open slots on the street. Now, I don't really mind other drivers having their cars washed, but their presence will make my departure - that delicate series of events which include leaving your slot in reverse, turning to the right side of the road, and making sure you don't hit the curb - a little more, err, interesting.

Catch was, a car arrived. Two, in fact. One of them was a CR-V with a girl driving it. Behind it was one of those not-so-old cars - I say that because it's relatively pimped: it's got something on its trunk, a bigger muffler, and that deep rumbling sound. (I obviously don't know much about these things.) The girl got a good slot, forcing the guy inside the not-so-old vehicle to park along the curb.

Turns out that the girl and the guy knew each other. And they went to the car wash together. When the girl parked her vehicle, she started worrying about where the guy can park his car. So, I thought, she owns the car, too. She had her car relatively pimped. I took a good look at the girl and felt confused: she was wearing shades (understandable), a tank top (understandable), and high heels (let me think about this) and she went to one of the wettest, dirtiest places in the world: a car wash.

Yes, the guy can park on the curb, because that's what everybody does. So he positions his car and starts backing up slowly, making sure he doesn't really block the road.

The girl, surprisingly, started spotting the guy as he backed up. He doesn't know how to drive? Can't be, I thought. He seems he's been doing it for ages.

The guy backs up ever so slowly. The girl starts screaming.

"Iusog mo! Iusog mo!" She starts knocking on the car frantically. I can imagine the driver was confused. I actually remember when I was still new at driving, when my mom was the frantic one as I parked the car in the garage for the first time.

I myself was confused - really confused - a split-second later, when the girl went to the guy and told him that he shouldn't park the car too close to the curb.

"Huwag masyadong malapit! Magagasgas ang mags! Magagasgas ang mags! Ang mags!"

This girl is wearing shades, a tank top and high heels to the car wash. She's frantically begging the guy to not park her car close to the curb, because he might scratch the mags. I was seated on that chair, watching the proceedings, thinking that it's quite an absurd situation to watch. And then I thought, am I being a misogynist?

To make things more absurd, the guy driving turned out to be one of the folks who drive the shuttles I take home from work. No wonder he had this slightly silly smile when he first arrived at the car wash, before all the screaming could happen.