I don't care what some say about guys being not supposed to watch the royal wedding. The math favors my curiosity: I'm 22, and the last really big royal wedding was three decades ago. And then there's the fact that all major TV networks have decided to devote blanket coverage of the event, going as far as pushing their evening newscasts to a later time slot to accommodate the video feed from Westminster Abbey. You can imagine the perverse joy inside me when I watched ABS-CBN take the BBC's coverage, knowing that Huw Edwards and Sophie Raworth aren't strange names to me, and scoffing when the local channels insist on throwing in ads when their feed was funded by the licence fee.

Yes, there's the spectacle - the "richest display of pageantry" in a while, the newspapers would say - and then there's seeing how people reacted to the event. There are the people camping outside the procession's route - a million, again according to the newspapers. You'd forget there are people who don't give a toss, the Brits who think it's just another wedding, only one funded by the taxpayer, supplying another reason that justifies their wishes for the monarchy to wither out of existence. And then there are the two billion people - newspapers, yes - watching on their TVs around the world, including the people on my Twitter timeline.

There's the urge to talk about how the union of who we're now supposed to call the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge happening in a much smaller world. But instead, I'll talk about how my friends fawned over every detail. Granted, they're female media types, so they're not just fawning about Kate's wedding dress or William's eerie similarity to our incompetent president. The BBC somehow managed to rig a camera, a spinning camera, at the high ceilings of Westminster Abbey. I was afraid it would fall, kill the newlyweds, and trigger a flurry of conspiracy theorists. My timeline was going, "wow, that camera, I like!" although not in those exact spazzed-out words, of course.

But that's just part of it. We're talking about the ladies. I don't mean to be sexist, but they're the people who want - nay, need - to be swept off their feet. No surprise the royal wedding would appeal to them. Sure, William and Kate were friends for a decade, and the period between their engagement and the actual wedding was roughly half a year, but the whole thing was still so grand, you can't help but feel overwhelmed. I wish someone does that to me, they'd go. They'd watch the ceremonies, wait for the vows, and go, hah, when will this happen to me? We did grow up with fairy tales, of girls waiting for true love, and of guys giving it to them, after a mountain of trials and the occasional dragon. We end up being a delusional lot. The girls, especially. See? Sexist.

"Ako, I object, hindi n'yo ba naririnig?"

Pretty much the thought of every woman when the bishop asked if anyone thinks the wedding shouldn't push through. Alas, the sidewalks are far from Westminster Abbey, and much more a home somewhere in the Philippines. I would've told Krizzie that - not out of annoyance, note - but the high number of question marks that followed that tweet made me chuckle.

My Twitter timeline was full of wedding quotes, observations and the actually cynical "I wish this union would last forever" tweet. And then there's Krizzie, who started looking for film schools in London, hoping for the chance to meet the (let's face it, much more handsome) Prince Harry. "Guys, hindi n'yo naiintindihan," she tweeted halfway through the ceremony. "I have this need. Need. To meet Prince Harry." Which would lead to a royal romance, and hopefully, a royal wedding. Blanket coverage, two billion people watching around the world, all eyes on you, Prince Harry's bride. You'll exchange vows, wave at the commoners outside, and maybe outdo your new brother-in-law's two pecks. Swept off your feet. Exactly.

I get it. We were all taught, as children, to aim for happily ever after. The problem is, we end up delusional. We can't be content with what we have; we want it big, so big, so freaking big that it's virtually impossible to have unless luck is on your side. We have ladies looking for their prince, and passing over anybody else who doesn't fit their standards. Yes, I know, you're nice, and your feelings are genuine, but you're not gonna cut it for me. You're just not good enough. And what is good enough? Someone who'll give me the moon and the stars. And that's not a metaphor. What, a grand gesture? You know, my friend did that once. With a little courage I can pull that off. Whatever you're thinking, it's not gonna cut it. I want that times fifty. Fine, that scenario is unlikely, but once you see a woman get just that - preferably on a television - you feel like being on Bride Wars.

Maybe delusional isn't the term. Shallow is. The need to see what you feel, rather than actually feel it. And I'm frustrated because, apparently, feeling something isn't enough anymore. You have to walk the talk. And even if the experts say you have to spend a minute and a half making eye contact with that someone, just to make her feel loved, well, they'd want a car to go with it. But the thing is, Kate probably didn't ask for that from William. All the pomp was circumstance. We all didn't see past that. Which is why we're two billion people watching on our televisions, hoping it's us. Okay, I meant half that number.

"May tinatapos kasi ako eh," Sudoy said.

"Okay lang," I answered. "Magpaparamdam na lang ako kay Sars."

I bid him goodbye, walked out of the office, waited for an elevator, went up, went down, and in between, sent Sars a text message.

"Andito ulit ako. Lunch?"

I found myself in a busy canteen. A really busy canteen. It was, after all, the middle of lunch break. I stood there for three minutes before finally deciding that Sars won't reply to my text message.

I walked out, took an escalator towards the train station, bought a ticket, and waited for the next train to come. It was taking a while. I think three trains arrived on the other side of the platform before I got in one. I decided the day was too good to pass up an opportunity to have lunch with someone.

"Free for lunch today?"

"No, sorry!" Michelle replied. "I'm out with my friend today."

"It's okay," I answered. "Long shot nga." It was a hashtag at the end of my text message.

The second train arrived on the other side of the platform.

"Free for lunch today?"

Clarence didn't reply. The third train came, and finally, a train I can get in. A fourth train. An empty fourth train. An unusually empty fourth train, since I'm not in the last station. Turns out there was another breakdown, which was exactly what I had anticipated.

"I'm in Bohol," Sars replied.

"Ay," I replied. "Oh well. Ingat diyan!"

"Good luck!" she said.

I got to my station. I got up another escalator, texting Gwen. "I hate being in Ortigas and nobody is available for lunch," I said. She, obviously, did not reply. I ended up splurging on pepper rice.

The last time this happened, we were fighting to stay together. Yes, I wanted to break free, but I was completely hesitant to do so. Letting go was just an option for when the while thing was irreparable. She, on the other hand, didn't want to let go. She gave me space, knowing I'd give us another try at one point or another. I did, a couple of months later. It wasn't irreparable.

Now, it happened again, and it's completely different. I just told myself, "right, that's it, there's nothing you can do." All she could muster was a mere "I'm beyond pissed at you!" Actually, I screwed up. It wasn't meant to be a spectacular break. I just broke off the wrong way, perhaps at the wrong time, and there it was. No more fighting.

I know we get tired after a while. We get bored. We look for something new. We decide to just forget about certain things, no matter how much it meant to us before. What amazes me - maybe it's the wrong line, but whatever - is how we do it. We hold on so hard. Or, we just let go. And it's never consistent. Two minutes ago I wanted this thing so badly. Two minutes later I don't give a damn.

What amazes me more is that, sometimes, we just don't care what happens. You let go of me? Fine. Enumerate reasons why. I'll be sour raping a bit. Maybe convincing mysel so hard that it's the right thing to do. Or I already have, which explains the "fine" part earlier. No more fighting.

And to think this is supposed to be forever. Or, at least you hoped it would be forever. But when you stop asking yourself whether it's your fault or not, well, it isn't supposed to be forever. It's a pit stop, not the finish line. You get back into the race. You were finding for the wrong thing. Now, if we could only get that right...

I've been in this, uhh, situation for the past four months, and all I can say is this: I need a vacation.

Go on, say it. You've been working at home for the past four months! Why the heck would you still need a vacation? Actually, it's a shallow thought. In the past three weeks I've been looking over the house, while my parents go on not-entirely-for-pleasure trips. Dad brought mom along to Singapore, and my sister somehow tagged along with them. Then dad brought mom to Baguio, and my brother somehow tagged along with them. All throughout, I've been looking after the house, sleeping in the master's bedroom, waking up at six in the morning, and foregoing my morning walk to sweep and mop the house.

I'm becoming a bit of a domestic diva. I haven't perfected the processes yet, but lately I'm feeling a bit more responsible with how things are around the house. I wash the dishes. I remove the dead leaves outside. I water the flowers. I cook my own corned beef omelettes, provided I remember to keep them in the fire rather than flipping it too early. (I know the recipe, but I fail in implementation.) But go on, say it. You should've been doing that a long time ago. I know. I don't have a line for that.

But while I still, somehow, manage to find a sense of fulfillment in my currently meandering life, I still think I should get out more. Sure, it's fun being at home 24/7, but it gets tiring after a while. My existence has reverted to a state never seen since I was a young boy: I go where my parents go. And by that, I don't mean Singapore or Baguio, but my grandparents' house. Apart from that, it's the house, except for the morning walks, where I get to walk around the subdivision. And on weekends, where I get to drive the car to the carwash, also within the subdivision.

Yeah, there's the fact that I now know how to drive, and I'm still earning some money, and in theory I could go out and spend it. I realized that last weekend, when I made plans to go to the mall to buy another set of headphones for my PC - it takes shorter times for them to get busted now - and a few other things. (Read: Glee CD. Latest issue of Q.) I wasn't sure if I'd be allowed, until my dad gave me the go-signal to bring the car, drive it to the mall, and do my supposedly important errands. And my mom was just, "mag-ingat ka sa pagmamaneho, ha?"

It's not my first time to drive by myself. I've done it once, twice, thrice - the last two instances were when my brother found himself in school on a weekend when my parents are meeting with old friends. But this one was different. I'm not going to do anything particularly important. I'm just going to go to the mall and buy some things I feel that I should have. Which means trying to find parking. Which means trying to park the car. In reverse. Which I somehow managed to do. That success - I was so giddy I had to send text messages rto my parents - overshadows the time when I ended up being stuck on a green traffic light when I went home.

It was, oddly, liberating. Maybe it's my mindset. If I can't go to Singapore, then I'll go to the mall. Sure, there's little variety in the CDs they sell, and Alabang isn't exactly the most exciting place to be in, but it's still some alone time. Me having a plan, walking around, making decisions, choosing things - I feel I have control over my life, or at least the money I spend.

But in the end, my mindset says an hour spent buying future trash doesn't cut it. The thing with my situation is, I'm pretty much isolated. Sure, I spent most of the past three years talking to people online, but at least there's still a chance to talk to them in person. Right now my personal interactions are limited to family, and while I know they're going to be with me until I die, it's starting to bore me.

I was having a conversation (on Twitter, of course) with Alyssa earlier. She was going on about having a theater workshop tonight, straight from work. Of course, that means she's sleepy. At least, she says, she's getting some sleep - twelve hours straight on the weekends - and that it's better to lose some sleep than be stuck at home. Of course that hit me. I want to say it didn't hit me badly, but it did, and not because of the usual "why them, not me?" argument I'm so used to floating. This is Alyssa, the girl who's somehow goading me to attend some gigs, partly because Tonet has been goading her to goad me to attend some gigs. I know the former from college; the latter, from my years as a radio geek - and somewhere along the way, they met. And I've met neither. And I realize that I'm in a pretty bad position if I want to stay sane.

To my credit, I've long had some meet-ups planned. That meet-up with Gwen, for one, isn't still happening. January? It's April now, and we haven't talked about it. I'm not sure if she's still interested, either. So much for me thinking that, if it does happen, I'll be driving to the rendezvous and look stupid while parking the car. Maybe ask her to park for me. Oh, that'd be a shame. But whatever. The thing with being isolated is, I've got too much time to figure out whether the friendships I have now are still worth an invitation to coffee - if they're still worth sticking with. I'm making progress, if you'd call it progress.

Surely you've been seeing my intermittent posts on The Duets Project - that little thing I have on Facebook where I post photos of me and someone else. Since I don't have that many photos of me in the first place, I have to go to everybody else's Multiply pages and hunt for albums with photos of me and someone else in it. Hard, because there aren't that many photos of me in the first place, partly because I never really was out and about.

Not that I'm complaining. More often than not I have a good idea of whose albums to go to, so I'm just treated to a kick back in time - back to, say, when we were still freshmen, when I was particularly earnest about doing things the right way. That thought makes me cringe now. I took things seriously and now I'm in between a rock and a hard place, if I'm allowed to exaggerate. And then that's forgotten, and I'm back to my nostalgia trip.

What makes these trips so fun is the fact that they seem so far away now. Everybody was right - you worry about things today, but when they pass you by and a few years fly by, they become mere artifacts. I worried about falling in love and now they're just silly stories. And I still don't have a love life to be proud of, but I have silly stories, albeit one I refuse to talk about, because I cringe whenever I think of all the blog entries I wrote. Am I in love with a girl named... I don't think so, Nicksy.

Today I was looking for more photos again. The problem was, I grossly miscalculated my probabilities. Here's me clicking on a photo album I never was part of in the first place. Here's me clicking on a photo album that, a few years ago, apparently, I vowed never to view, because for some odd reason it makes me feel really, really bad about myself. Well, to my credit, I did forget about it. It's been three years, and it should be just some chapter than you look back and chuckle about. And I did. And then it wasn't.

I hated the way how disastrous the process of moving on has been. Maybe it's because I made such a fuss out of it back then - it pretty much consumed me - but I just wanted it over with, despite knowing that I can't just yet. And then it's suddenly gone. Three years pass by, and it becomes a silly story.

The difference is, this story didn't end spectacularly. It just ended. I didn't feel anything that warranted an overreaction. It just ended. So, whew, this is what you really call moving on. No bad feelings whatsoever. Just a silly story in three years or so. That pretty much happened. It's been three years. It's a silly story, of me saying nothing will happen, only for something to happen, and so publicly unfolding on the airwaves. I cringe when I remember saying "I la la her" on the phone at five before midnight. It was a pretty good ending for someone with a disastrous streak.

That photo album reminded me of how bad things really were.

Perhaps I pushed it out of my head. Good thing, I might've said. I'm coping. But I lived with a lie while all of that was happening, and three years later my silly story is a lie. The story went along the lines of I didn't explode. I didn't look foolish. I kept quiet, and then it was done. But it was more of her not liking me as much as she did the others. Or, it's me being so shelled in and the others being so nice. More or less, it's a slow motion train wreck. The whiplash came in late. Really, really late.

Only I remember that I felt that very way before, back when I was in the middle of it. And I was pushing it out of my head Good thing, I definitely said. I'm coping. I'm growing as a person. I'm no longer overreacting. I was delusional. I know I'm sounding like five years ago, but I was delusional. I was convincing myself that this was going so, so well, only it isn't, because while I swooned in the corner I did not exist unless I had to.

That's the funny thing with this. Many times I told myself not to make a big deal out of something because it's immature, but the one time I did that, I end up with a lot of unresolved issues. I meandered, but I didn't really make it. And look, I'm this guy who stumbled this way around, and the rest were so smooth. And it reflects in every situation that involved me dealing with other people. Either it's too much or too little. I never really learned anything.

Two years ago I was calling that story a wonderful one. Nothing bad happened. Funny what an extra two years does to a supposedly silly story.

I shouldn't be doing this - after all, I'm the most insecure person within a four square meter radius - but I don't know. I pick up a magazine and, rather than flick through random pages to appreciate the design or hope for an eye-catching photo, I go straight to the masthead and read the names of the people who were involved in the making of the magazine.

My official position goes along the lines of "I don't know whether this is the thing I should be doing." I've tried applying for magazines but I never got past first base, to mangle my metaphors. Actually, I never even got to first base. And then you see the same names in different publications - I think I've read too many magazines in barber shops - and you have me elaborating on something I've complained about before.

Yesterday I was having a long overdue haircut and I was reading a magazine I wouldn't usually read, partly because it's about something I wouldn't usually be interested in. Okay, it's design, but it's snobbish design, like there is such a thing as non-snobbish design. And besides, I had no choice - I was in a different barber shop, one with magazines that are either oddly irrelevant, or particularly old they're so dilapidated. You wouldn't know it's Daiana Menezes on that spread. So I picked up the one that I could practically read, and went on to read the masthead. And there it was. A person that I knew.

I could count one, two, three people I know who work in magazines. Suddenly there's a fourth, although she's someone I wasn't really particularly close with. We weren't friends in the strictest sense - we were classmates in one class, and I always thought she was annoyed at me. I mean, I was a sophomore that's too eager relative to the time I spent in college. She was a senior who just wanted it over with. But somehow I decided to add her in Facebook, and somehow she decided to add me back. Oh, right, we worked together at one point. And I remember seeing one of her posts a few weeks back, about having written this and that for a magazine, and I get the air that she's proud of her work, which is natural, except that she stated it in a very Albie-like way. Not her exact words: people just don't get it, and it's frustrating.

Well, I'm sorry if I'm a Muggle and you're a Mudblood. Then again, you need to be particularly exposed to high society to be able to write about design. I just can't imagine someone who prefers gin over wine to be hobnobbing with fashion designers and whatnot. But that's not really the point. Since seeing that Facebook post, I got curious. Yes, everybody can write. And yes, I'm insecure. And here's a chance for me to see what the whole deal is about. I must note, I'm not approaching this with animosity or anything. I guess people just get luckier sometimes - anyway, the clincher was when I started reading. My eyes opened wide, and my jaw almost dropped.

She started her article with the word "taciturn". I don't know what that means.

When I was in high school, I discovered that I tend to take a while to find the right words to describe things. Say, "angry" may work for most of us, but not for me - sure, I'm angry, but it's more frustrated with a hint of confused. What's the right word for that? There's no telling. I try to find the right word but I don't go hunting for it in the dictionary. It doesn't help that it's organized alphabetically by word rather than by definition. (Which would've been a pain in the ass.) And, yes, there's the fact that I don't really use that word. Taciturn. That's only the second time I've written that word in my entire life.

And that comes from the person who occasionally uses the word "confuddlement". My browser may slap a red underline on that word, but it exists. "A state of extreme confusion." Apt, right? Things leave me confuddled sometimes. (There goes another red underline.) That, and it sounds so confusingly awkward it makes Marshall McLuhan proud. I remember Jackie tweeting me back about seeing me use that word. "So I had to search for it in the dictionary!" she said. I felt proud at one point, and then I thought, "is there really such a word, or did I just make it up?"

Sure, we use words we pick up. I must've seen "confuddlement" somewhere and figured out what it meant immediately. Context clues, according to our reading lessons. I have encountered "taciturn" a few times but I just never had those context clues. I look at the dictionary and it gives me a definition: temperamentally untalkative. Ah, so that's what it means. I actually have a different word for that, a word that I never see used in the few fiction books I've read. I call that a snob. Or, when I'm angry, a bitch.