about the talking fish

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Writer. Wheelman. Occasional DIY mechanic. Walking collection of hang-ups. Hopeless romantic. Old-school. Analog soul in a digital world. I am all of these things and more.

Saturday, September 28, 2002

Pam's been sick for the past few days, I suspect probably due to fatigue. I feel so helpless as this bug began to happen right after we dated last Wednesday.

I only want to make you feel better, my lady. I'd do anything to make you more comfortable.
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Had our advisor for The LaSallian for this morning's writing workshop. Was it even a workshop at all? My friends would probably agree that it was more of a lambasting tirade that lasted for a good 4 hours.

In a nutshell, our advisor Bombit Largoza criticized all the not-so-incremental mistakes and foibles that the staffers and even the editors were prone to doing, such as forgetting the logic of news articles and not being "dogged" enough to ask our interviewees those questions that might just strike a violent chord in them.

In the span of those 4 hours Bombit turned my perceptions of how a writer should operate upside-down. Honestly I don't know if I should be grateful or downright scared of all the expectations he places upon us, especially since The LaSallian is 40-odd years old already. His prevalent message was that of joining The LaSallian not simply because I needed to make employers see that I had a life aside from my studies. I should be in The LaSallian because I want to incur "critical thinking" within the student populace (all 11,000 of them) of De La Salle University.

I feel a heady rush, but my friends and I know we can't turn TLS around in the span of one month. Some of us were even thinking that may not happen in the span of one year.

Bombit's most important lesson for me was that I had to get rid of looking at the world as if it revolved around me and my bourgeois upbringing and surroundings. That's a bitter pill to swallow, I suppose.
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Had the Student Publications Office Cup sports events in the afternoon. I played in mixed volleyball and we lost by a rather embarrasing margin, but we did make up for it by winning the basketball game against the yearbook Green & White.
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I'm tired. Made so many lunging and diving receptions in that volleyball game which left me either rolling to a standstill or scraping my elbows and knees---and yet not one of those heroic efforts resulted in the ball landing inside the damned court.

Oh well.
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Spammers beware. I will not entertain any unsolicited advice or "pass-to-X-number-of-people" chain-letter messages. If I do, they await an instant trip to my garbage bin.

If you got offended, then dammit, take it with a grain of salt. This isn't a matter of being nice or rude. This is all a matter of me saying "I DON'T WANT ANY MORE SPAM!" And goddamnit, if you think I'm being mean, it's not my problem anymore. People are never entitled to like what I have to say, are they?

Understood?!
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I better ease off on my temper. Getting angry just drains me of my energy.

Friday, September 27, 2002

The people who send me spam e-mail are actually complaining that I've been quite mean.

Let's just put it this way: There are things I don't need to receive...

Sigh...is there no remotely civil way of telling spammers that I don't want what they give me? All the thoughts I have in reply mulling in my head are violent.

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Will add to this post later.

Monday, September 23, 2002

Word of the week: Burn-out. Please don't ask why.

I mean it. DON'T ASK.
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I'm pretty sure I have that fair handful of offline friends who read the trash I post on my blog, whether by force of habit or by sheer coincidence. Let me just take this opportunity to kindly request well-being friends from filling my mailbox with unsolicited advice, quotes or pass-to-X-number-of-people e-mail. There's one very good word for those sorts of things ending up in my mail: SPAM. I don't fucking need it, so stop shoving it down my throat.

Capisce?!
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I'm feeling rather evil today. Ain't it obvious.

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Yesterday was so fucked-up.

I absolutely could not sleep. I was awake on an entire 6-hour stretch, eating up most of what should've been all-important sleep especially since I just recovered from exhaustion-induced fever. No matter what I did---read, listen to music, watch late-night TV, call Pam, eat breadsticks---I just could not sleep even at 4am.

I woke up from a horrible 90-minute dose of kip with a massive headache, which surprisingly dissipated while I was driving myself and my sister to school. It didn't manifest itself too much while I was in class too. Getting home, however, was another story. I actually felt my temperature rising while I was crankily navigating myself through flood and traffic-ridden streets, and it didn't help that my windshield and windows were constantly fogging up while I was on the Skyway. Imagine driving with that.

Sure enough I got home to a mercury column kissing the 38-degree mark. I was sick. AGAIN. So last night, I made it a point to sleep as early as possible since we had only one morning class. And right now, I'm home because I drove back ASAP and promised to fetch my sister instead.

I feel a lot better but I can't seem to get rid of my headache.
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My Net connection isn't working! Damnit! How am I supposed to do research on German expressionism for my Film class' reaction paper due tomorrow?!
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Thanks for the help, Pam. Was nice seeing you again, love.

Monday, September 16, 2002

Even after I've gotten a sitemeter by Pam's request, I've been very lenient and nonchalant with monitoring my blog's traffic. However, the last time I checked my counter's returns, I'm surprised at the number of hits I'm getting, for someone who admittedly doesn't post very often. You guys really do love me.

I'm still wondering if this amount of visits is due to people regularly coming and going through my blog so many times a day or it's due to a hundred people visiting every day of the week. But I'm happy both ways.
After some serious delays, I'm back.
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While the whole world---er, America, rather---was grieving its year-long loss brought about by its very reckless political advancements last September 11, Pam and I had such a great date.

Met at Starbucks. Had cinnamon goodies at Cinnzeo. Watched (and seriously enjoyed) S1M0NE. Kissed and hugged in the dark cinema, almost constantly. Went to Topshop to scope out happy socks, "funny undies" and a couple of coats Pam really really wanted. Ate late lunch at Friday's after a frustrated attempt to locate Haagen-Dazs in Robinsons Place for cookie dough ice cream. Bought and shared fruit yogurt instead. Bought magazines at National Bookstore. Bought and shared a scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream (and seriously enjoyed it, I might add), before sharing a cab back to school.

I was amazed we crammed so many things in one day.

I love you, my baby.
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Going to Baguio for three days with only my family wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. Sure, the Camp John Hay Manor was picturesque, the atmosphere was chilly and clambering up and down a fog-filled-but-newly-reconstructed Marcos Highway in a 4WD Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero/Shogun was exhilarating. (Actually seeing the SUV's altimeter point to a 1400m elevation was a point of excitement, having it level at 0m for what seems like forever.) However my company and our itinerary was dour and unexciting. The most exciting thing we all did was watch the US Open on cable TV.

Kinda like driving 20 km/h in an unrestricted German autobahn. How dull and pointless can that get? Remind me never to even consider making the climb to Baguio with less than seven people.
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My fifth term in DLSU has started and I'm scared. I get the impression that my major-subject professors are demanding as hell, seeing as they preferred to bombard us with announcements of their grandiose final projects right off the bat. It's as if they all had this agreement to scare us out of our courses, which isn't too farfetched since they all belong in only one department and handle only two classes.

My blockmates and I feel the alienation beginning to set in. Since we're two blocks of Communication Arts majors, the damned Academic Assistant made our majors classes in such a way that each block is split in half. I can't help but think about my other blockmates all the time.
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De La Salle snapped its chance of a 14-win sweep of the UAAP basketball tournament, and it had to lose to Ateneo de Manila, of all universities. It even had to lose with an embarrassing deficit of around 15 points.

That's what we get for being cocky. MIKE CORTEZ, CAN YOU HEAR ME, DAMMIT?!
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Never thought a simple PE session of badminton drills was all it took to totally deplete me of energy and send me to sick bay for the weekend. I guess I also abused my sleeping habits, too...but this schedule's hard on me as it is already, and my sister had to complicate things by making me come to school at 7am for her special religion class.

That's so inconsiderate of her, really. But I'll just shut up and let my blog do the talking.

In the meantime maybe I should seriously consider being a Sports Complex resident and jog laps to keep fit.

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Went to school today to pick up my course cards once and for all.

Overall I was surprised I passed Accounting 1B and Intro to Philosophy, albeit with disappointingly low grades (1.0 and 1.5 respectively). Even more surprising was how close I got to getting a flat 3.0 GPA despite my low grades, because I grabbed a trio of 4.0's, a couple of 3.5's and a 3.0 on my remaining subjects.

As it stands, my GPA stands at 2.925, which isn't a long way behind last term's 3.05 GPA effort. Not bad. Not bad at all.
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I'm having second thoughts on staying on as newswriter for The LaSallian. I haven't been writing any news articles nor have I been finding out any information on my assigned beats. Maybe I should move to Layout and arrange the news pages to make up for my lethargy. That's the best I can think of right now, as I think I no longer have the nose for news.
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Ruth has changed the link to my blog, renaming it "cheesecake baker." Hmmmm.
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I love you my baby...

Sunday, September 01, 2002

Had a really busy August 31st. In the morning we scheduled the fifth EB of Otakuboard in Greenbelt, which only around eight or nine of us attended. We got to meet a couple of newbies though, and they were pretty cool and sociable off the bat. By all means it should have been a pretty lousy EB, as Nicco didn't organize anything.

Paul: "What's the plan?"
Nicco: "The plan is, there is no plan."

I enjoyed it somehow, though. I liked this particular EB because I didn't feel any inhibition or feeling of being out of place, for some reason. We were all a bunch of jokers without any definite plans in mind. We split up rather early though.
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After Otakuboard EB5, I went to Glorietta (not far away) and met up with my baby.

At first the happy-go-lucky nature of EB5 seemed to rub off on both of us as we didn't have anything in mind for our date. We simply strolled around, ate crostini and spinach dip at Cibo and later ate ice cream at Haagen-Dazs. Pam was squeezing me all the time, pinching my arms, playing with my hands, kissing my cheek. She even brought her little camera and was constantly taking pictures of me all the time---when I was eating, writing on my tickler, even when I was driving. I felt shortchanged because I didn't get to use my camera on her...I wanted to see her smile.

We made out in my car again. I think we both felt a little more urgent this time. We wanted each other so badly.

Don't worry love. My next term is very very forgiving on us...we have all the time on Wednesdays to date...
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I actually fell asleep while talking with Pam because I was so tired. She thought it was cute listening to me breathe until our phones lost their signals.

Darling, you're cute too.
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Received a surprise in my mail today. Angel invited me into this group blog of ours named after our barkada, the Zen Clan. Really cool.
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