I Hope I'm Doing the Right Thing

So last week, I got a call from someone.

It's a long story, with several phone calls, two online exams and a bunch of "yes, ma'ams" involved.

Condensed version: she's calling on behalf of DISNEY.

Yes, as in Walt Disney. The one with all the theme parks and that stupid cartoon mouse with the stupid cartoon voice.

They're looking for a QA tester who speaks Mandarin, which is pretty much the capsule form of my CV.

And I said no.

Like, seriously. That's effing Disney. 

And I said no.

Because I'd rather stay here, stick it out with my present job while I find a university that will let me teach part time. Maybe learn French. Get some kind of hobby.

So I said no.

And I know it will be difficult. And it will be tiring. And things might turn ugly. And when everything goes wrong I might look back at this moment and think, "I was so stupid".

But I'll still say no.

Because this -- what I have now -- it's the start of the life I want.

Hopefully Hopeless

So there are a lot of things going on at the moment.

Or maybe not quite, since there's nothing actually, literally "going on" and my life is still as stagnant as the Pasig River.

It's just interesting that there seems to be more than a few opportunities knocking at my door these past few days, and they're not just your run of the mill opportunities.

They're absolutely the "what did I do to deserve this, I'm a terrible person" kind of opportunities.

These are things that rarely ever happen to someone as blatantly horrible as I am.

If my life were a fairy tale, I'd be shoved into the pot of boiling water by the time "happily ever after" comes around.

Which is why I'm taking everything with a grain of salt.  Part of me thinks this is all a joke, so I'm glancing at these blasted opportunities sideways and waiting for the catch to come blindside me.

I'm not keeping my hopes up.

I think it's a little sad that I've become this cynical of good fortune, but experience tells me I'd be better off not counting the bloody chickens before they actually hatch. 

Nobody Ever Made Mix Tapes for Me

So this was supposed to be some sort of review of Stephen Chbosky's Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), but I just finished watching Freaks and Geeks last night, so this might as well be a double feature.

There are a million things I can say after finishing both, but basically I have one question in my head:

WHAT THE FUCK AM I STILL DOING HERE?

I'm stuck, waiting, living from paycheck to paycheck, still hoping that one day I'll have enough balls to go off and shape my future the way I want to rather than have to.  I haven't given up on my dreams, but I'm starting to think I'll never have the ability to fulfill them. 

It's not attractive, this whining. I know that. Clearly.

On an adolescent it's irritating but expected. In an adult, not so much.

The point, though, is that after watching the series and reading the book, my on-going sort-of depression sort of worsened. 

I've been in a funk for more than two weeks now, which is longer than most funks I've been in.  Normally I get really, horribly, unbearably angsty for two to three days, then it's done. 

Now it's like I'm still in that stupid little woe bubble and I'm moving, feeling, thinking sluggishly.  And I don't think I want to do anything about it.

Or maybe I do, it's just that I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to do.

Thing is, the series and the book got me thinking. Teenagers don't know what to with their lives. They're in a place where everything is possible and impossible at the same time.  

They get to whine about the futility of action, or the lack of choice, or the existentialist bullshit that the rest of the world has grown immune to.  It's understandable.

I'm twenty fucking seven.

What's my excuse?

You know right now I just really, really wish idealism would leave me alone. 

I don't know how others do it, turn into an automaton and just become completely unfeeling and un-hoping.  They're just okay, you know. Things are fine. Things are moving along great. Got to save up and get that house with the one-car garage. Got to get married. Got to have kids.

Grow old and die.

It's soulless, but it's ultimately a lot easier than thinking that there's got to be something better out there for me.

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but thinking and accepting that THIS is all that the rest of my life can ever be?

Sucks.

You Know It's Not Really a Secret Once You Publish a Book About It

So I've been bored.

Like, really bored.

The past week has been spent mostly reading Chuvaness' blog, because (a) it's seriously awesome and (b) I'm bored.

One thing that kept cropping up on her blog -- after the sosyal bags and the religious nuttering -- is this thing about "The Secret".

Supposedly, there's a book called "The Secret" that expounds on the Law of Attraction.  It simply means that if you think of something, or want something hard enough, the universe will conspire for you to get it.

Which is a load of bull, if you ask me.  I can sit here the entire day and visualize Fabio Ide coming over to lick my feet, but that's not really gonna happen is it?

Still, I'm at this point in my life wherein everything is sort of in the toilet, so I might just be desperate enough to try this Secret shit.  (Side note: will it not work if I cuss it out? Uh-oh)

So here's a list of the stuff I want, Universe.  You can be sure I'll devote a few hours of daydreaming to, ahem, visualizing.

1. To work and study while pursuing a PhD program in the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) London.  
2. A boyfriend with sandy brown hair, at least 5'9", medium built, nice smile, good-looking, intelligent and will get me when I pepper my sentences with things like "flux capacitor", "reverse the polarity" and "I ain't stepping outta shit, all my papers' legit".
3. A house. With at least three rooms, inside a gated village that has its own pool. And a tiny garden at the back. 
4. Tons of money.  Like seriously, TONS.

If any of those things come true, I'm treating you to a massive drinking spree, Universe.  I'll drink for the both of us.  

Stuck

I feel like I'm decomposing somehow.

Or maybe that's not a very good description at all.  

I'm stagnant, is more like it, trapped like carbonite Han Solo.  

Life has slowed down to such a pace that every single day is almost entirely like the last one.  The uniformity and its implications for the rest of my life are sickening. 

I'm tired, honestly.

Bored.

I'm in a bog, mired and unmoving.

I need something.

Anything.

(Preferably with 12% alcohol)

21 Forever (or the Obligatory Birthday Post)

So, technically, I'm no longer 21.

27 and a day, actually, if you're anal about things like "facts" and "truth".

It's just that people always say there's a difference between your actual age and your mental age.  Certainly, there is no changing the gradual and inevitable deterioration of your once youthful body.  It's a harsh, bitchy little fact of life.  

The way you think, however, is totally up to you.

I've met 40-year-old men who still cling to their mothers (true story, please never ask) and eight-year-olds who know more than I do.

Truth. 

So I may have marked my 27th year with chocolate cake and pear-flavored vodka (choose this only if you like gargling car freshener), but I say mentally, I'm pretty much stuck at 21.

It's a personal choice.

I want to stay 21 in my mind.

Not 16.  16 years old is when you think you know everything and anything, like life is some sort of easy shit you can conquer in a snap.  Plus, at 16, I was constantly angry (thanks Nirvana! thanks Jessica Zafra!), as if the world owed me a frigging explanation for everything.  Also, zits.

Not 20.  I graduated from college at 20 (or 19 and a few months, again for the Freudian butt-fixated).  At that time I honestly, honestly thought that I could take the world by storm.  Ah, youthful naivete.  How pitiful you are.  I was at the top of my game, and I really believed that my brains could somehow translate into success in the workplace.  It couldn't.  

20 is when you realize that life is an actual, real bitch.  

It's no longer just a catchphrase.  Everything you learned in school -- all those frigging trinomials and the capital of Burkina Faso -- is pointless.  

Which is why I choose to stay 21. 

21 is when your initial shock over the realities of life as an "adult" finally subside and you come to terms with the bullshit that is the rest of your life.  This is what the world is like.   

Basically, the world hates you and you just learn to deal with it. 

At 21, you realize that you know nothing, and that it's not too late to start learning.  Life is what it is, you have responsibilities to shoulder, and there's no point bitching and whining.  

You're officially an adult at 21, but you know better than that.  

21 is when you finally have your life in your hands, all your cards laid out before you, all your weaknesses paraded out in the open -- and you feel great.  

Your future is uncertain, you're not doing what you thought you'd be doing after graduation, things and people disappoint, but it's fine.  The blinders are off, you finally know that you don't really know anything. 

And you come out guns blazing, in absolute fighting form, because for the first time in your life: you're actually ready.

Mirror, Mirror

I am incredibly and insufferably vain.

I don't look vain, I know.  I barely brush my hair (I don't own a comb), I don't wear makeup apart from lip balm and my fashion sense is somewhere between Vietnamese refugee and hygienic hobo.  

But I am vain.  Completely and shamelessly so.

Whereas other girls try to look presentable from head to toe, I focus on nothing but skin care.

I have no time for hair care products, I buy clothes without fitting them and perfume salesmen can suck it.

All I care about is my skin.

I suppose I'm compensating.  Puberty was a major bitch.  Although I never did get hordes of pimples all over my face, I was never the girl who had clear, glowing skin.  If I remember correctly, I looked sallow and there was always at least one GIGANTIC pimple squatting illegally somewhere on my face.  

I hated it.

I suppose my obsessive-compulsive behavior extends to my desire to have a clear and unblemished face. A reddish dot appears and I jump on it, attacking it with a gazillion creams and potions.  I can't stop looking for blemishes on my face: pimples, would-be pimples, fine lines, discoloration -- I am constantly and vigilantly waiting for the next battle to fight.

It never ends.

Which is why the Dove "don't look in the mirror" challenge I read about on PDI today intrigues me.  I've come to realize that my obsession with having perfect skin is getting in the way of me having perfect skin.  I find a teensy blackhead and squeeze it to death, leading to a rather ugly scar on the tip of my nose (true story).  I pile products on like there's no tomorrow, hoping that each one will be the miracle "perfect skin" potion to end all my skin care woes.

I'm making things worse, is what I'm saying.

So I'm taking the challenge, out of my own volition and not as part of that Dove marketing thing.  I hate using Dove on my body -- God knows I'll never use it on my face.  But the idea of not obsessing over my face in the mirror?

It sounds strangely liberating.

So I'll go on with my cleanse-tone-moisturize routine, plus sunblock in the morning, but I won't stop to really look at myself in the mirror.  No more long hours of agonizing over my giant pores.  No more drama over the latest blemish to appear on my face.  

I can do this!

Let's try five days.

Single Yellow Female

So it suddenly hit me last night: I'm turning 27 in a few days.

And I still don't have a boyfriend.

Of course it's not like I've never had a boyfriend.  Okay, technically that's true.  Technically.  I did have some sort of pseudo-boyfriend in fifth grade, but, well -- it's fifth grade.

No relationship before high school should count, especially if by "relationship" we mean little more than exchanging letters and sideward glances.

So then, the future.

I'm 27 -- fucking 27 years old!

I can't even play the young ingenue in rom-coms anymore.  In a few days, I'm officially entering Sarah Jessica Parker-pointless-illogical-romantic-comedies territory.

There will be no turning back.

I know, I know.  For the longest time, I insisted that I wanted no commitment of any kind.  Now that I'm nearing actual old age (I'm now categorized as "late 20s" -- FUUUUUUUUUU), the idea of spending the rest of my life alone in a flat reeking of mothballs and white flower, perhaps surrounded by irate felines , scares the shit out of me.

My friends used to tease me with this poem from the "Book of Songs" (yes, we are ginormous nerds), entitled "Plop Fall the Plums", where the speaker is a choosy young woman who finds her suitors growing less as the years past.

Ahem.

So maybe there's a point to the poem.  After all, it's attributed to Confucius.  I'm Chinese and hardwired to accept his words as truth.  

So maybe it's too late.  I'm reaping the lonely life of a choosy woman.

Better start adopting cats now.

Junk

I did some sort of spring cleaning today.

Spurred by the lack of space in this room I share with my sisters, I decided it was high time I cleaned out the old and bulky desks/cabinets/drawers so I can finally purchase a decent shelf for my ever growing collection of books.

Armed with ginormous plastic bags and gloves (it's not an affectation -- I have skin asthma and contact with dust will lead to itchy, itchy blotches on my skin), I started with a particularly gruesome desk containing my old stuff.

I guess I never really bothered to clean out that desk since forever, seeing how I found a bunch of things from my high school days.  Yes, I'm horrible.  I don't really "clean" stuff out, I just stash them away and hope to forget about them.  

I found class cards (of irregular classmates, possibly left with me by professors for safekeeping), test papers, school notes, receipts, pimple creams that never worked, lip balms, hair clips, coins and a bunch of other pointless stuff.  I found old cards, notes from friends, fifty bucks, cheesy attempts at fiction, IDs, boarding passes and pens that no longer write.

I found pictures and memories, stuff I'd stashed away into the very recesses of my mind.  

It's not easy cleaning out a decade of my life, every single bit reminding me of something or someone.  It's junk, true, coated in dust and grime, but it's junk that holds memories past, things that once meant something to me.  

I must be getting old; even cleaning gets me sentimental.

Back to Blogging

So I think some time ago I said I wasn't going to blog much anymore.

I'd gone through a bit of a writing drought anyway.  So I stuck to Tumblr, because you don't have to write anything on Tumblr. LOLCATS are good enough.

But then I decided to have this book blog, mostly to motivate myself to finish more books this year.

Now I'm thinking I'll make this more of a "blog" blog, meaning I'll be writing about more than just books.

Hmm.

Ergo the title of the blog totally needs to go.

PS: Blog title changed. It still makes no sense.

Ahoy!

I think I have far too many blogs.

Really. I already have one on LJ, one on Tumblr, archives on Wordpress and another on some other platform that I can't even remember right now.

Plus I have Twitter, which is not blogging but sort of like it anyway.

The thing, though, is that I think this blog actually is necessary. It has a purpose, you know, unlike all the rest. Except Tumblr, of course, which is where I get my daily fill of lolcats and other stupid memes.

So then: what's this one for?

I'm on a quest to regain a steady reading habit, which took a really bad hit when I started working. My post-grad studies have not been very helpful either. For at least five years, majority of the books I've read are related to school work, which can tiring no matter how nerdy you are.

So this: I'm done with the thesis (well, technically, but there's some sort of snag -- don't ask) and I now have the time to finally get through my stash of books. I'm sort of inspired by the slew of book blogs started by a bunch of my online friends, and this blog will help me chronicle my jumble of thoughts and feelings, which is necessary because the alternative is me writing on the margins of my books.

I do not promise coherence, or sense, or anything at all.

I just need some place to geek out on my books, and that's that.