there is something about home that makes you not miss it.

wait.

it's not about home. it's about you. growing up.

it's home you do not miss. but you cry for those who make it such. wish you could take them anywhere.

for now, photos and thoughts will have to do.

search me everywhere. read me at.

today, i read Patricia Evangelista's column at the Opinion Page of Philippine Daily Inquirer.

digression: i've always had respect for her since she won for the Philippines (and for herself, since that paved the way for her for a lot of opportunities) in that international english-speaking competition in london (for the loathing of my memory, i've no such thing as specifics) but her short stints at Young Star and at Studio 23's Breakfast show, didn't really earn it. i'm glad she's in "higher" grounds now, her column sitting beside those of conrado de quiros and randy david, a once-upon-a-time airtime with bo sanchez and a new one in ANC (clue: they're always serious there). there's no doubt of the brilliance of her thoughts and of how she expresses them.

---

A BOY DIED LAST MONDAY.

This year was his last in the University of the Philippines Diliman, the year he sat in the student council. He was the eldest of his family, and his mother in Tiaong, Quezon believed he would pull them out of poverty. He was 20 years old. Cris was tall, and thin, and kind, and when he was killed last Monday, his killers ran away and tried to forget who he was.

I write this at dawn, six days since he was carried into the Veteran's Memorial Medical Center, battered and bruised purple. The doctors say Cris was dead on arrival.

Cris Mendez left testimony with his friends that he was joining Sigma Rho, and that Ariel Paolo Ante, chair of the NCPAG student council, was his recruiter and initiation master. Ante has disappeared. In a report from this paper, Ante asked Cris' friends to wish him good luck "for the initiation" which was to take place over the weekend.

Right now, the men who watched Cris die can still sleep in their beds at night. They remember how his eyes looked those last few minutes. They know if he cried, if he begged; if he said please, stop. They held his broken body on the way to the hospital. They saw him and touched him and heard him scream, and today some of them still go to class and study human rights law.

There are many things I do not understand. I understand that these fraternity men are scholars, law students, people educated by the state in the hope that someday they will give back in service to the nation. I do not understand what sort of twisted logic can make intelligent men believe that friendship and loyalty need to be proven through a brutal initiation.

"Such distorted values," as UP Diliman Chancellor Sergio Cao says, "have no place in an institution of higher learning like UP." Hazing is illegal, and has been for more than a decade. The administration is currently building its case against Sigma Rho, and its officers have been suspended.

Last Friday, Cris' friends from NCPAG lit candles and gathered on the steps of the Palma Hall building. There were around 200 of them, less than the numbers of those who protested tuition fee increases, thousands less than those who turned up for last Christmas' lantern parade. The Office of the Vice President for Public Affairs has received more calls over the streaking of two women during the Oblation Run than he has regarding Cris' death. This is UP. We say we stand for the people. We condemn the violence of the war against terror. We rage against those who mangle the Constitution. We fill the streets with our numbers for the disappeared and the distressed. Yet we continue to work and study beside barbarians who whip unresisting boys into submission. Today one boy is dead. One life is gone. Many others have been lost before, but were forgotten. Why are we silent now?

read the entire article at: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=86071

i turned 22 yesterday. at 12 am, i woke up, opened the door and without warning, defeated (gratefully) by UNannounced merriment to my then half conscious state. there was a candle on top of a cake (yum) and a loud "happy birthday" that i rather did not get. care of two friends whose thoughtfulness i thought non-existed until that moment. jesseca and jamie. jamie and jesseca.

jamie is a computer techie who works for a japanese computer programming company based here in cebu. jesseca is a med student. me a full-happy my family member and aspiring writer (among many aspiring others) and half-happy marketing officer at a stray furniture company. we are a very bad match, pulled in by forces of our almost forgotten high school memories. and our love to shell out too much money for food.

we have an unlikely friendship, really, which is what WE all need actually. worst case, we love laughing at and making fun of each other. a day that doesn't start with that is already disturbing. laughter is the best medicine they say, and being laughed at is, um, humbling.

in the evening, i was humbled by my cousin who opened the washroom while i was halfway through my liquid-ation at the bowl. she had a cake with a stick-thin candle in one hand and her camera-phone on the other. when you're halfway through liquid-ation at the bowl, that could be the most demeaning thing that you need the least (never need it at all). but it happened -- the birthday song, camera-phone that clicked like a flu victim, and like a go-getter pretend would, the 22nd birthday candle blowing. with my cousin and her "instruments" laughing their hearts out by the door, i couldn't stand up to put my panty back on (for very gurrrrrrl reasons). i was humiliated. not entirely by my cousin, but by her sweetness, her family love, and her perkiness. she has her ways... and i'll get back at her with mine (bring it on, cai!) :)

thank you guys for putting on really nice faces to a surprise. you got me.

on sunday...

jane flew in from manila to join us in our overdue wormies gathering and my pre-birthday celebration. the last time we saw most of each other, we were bawling our eyes out (on graduation night). zyra and erbelle showed up as well, which upgraded our mere gathering to a well-deserved reunion. j.lo was the most awaited special guest, but s/he stood us up for a very bad reason. (s/he shouldn't have just made the attempt to reason...). narsh came with her boyfriend. jessa came with her boyfriend. sheila came with her boyfriend. which made the "vita, our only wish is for you to get a boyfriend" very comfortable (but seriously, it was very uncomfortable). maybe i should start working towards that end, rather than on real-life and actual translation of my high school days' to-work-in-a magazine dreams and um, getting a life. 

just kidding. like what i told j.lo, i'm a romantic at heart. i believe i'd rather wait for my prince (eyuck, so high school) to find me at the most unbelievable of moments than me finding him at the most mundane of days.

get that, wellwishers. :)

love you guys.

thank God for a place called youtube. i just got hooked, the symptoms for me such as staying up as late as 2 am in the morning. if not for my mother's equal demands (as that of the arcade fire's musical rage), i would have killed my eyes to sleep facing this one most intrumental to achieving eargasm.

i'm now a slave. visit my page, www.youtube.com/augustchild29. see i'm romantic to the point of rhyming!

see what fire is driving me wild.

my mind is restless at 2.36 am. at this very moment. i am fully awake with a deadline that's past its final call for some 2.36 hours. i thought this article would be a breeze to get past through, but i'm struggling for words, such that would perfectly illustrate what i want others to read.

since my mind is not working on that page, i allow it to stray to this one. my 8-6 desk job would punish me for this, but i cannot go to bed to keep it from coming. i repeat, i'm past the deadest call for some 2.36 hours. i no longer have my deadline beater assurance to boot. mark this down, post.

so after dinner tonight my charming 6 year old cousin eduard called me an ugly, rotten dog. then he added very to that. before he was born, when his older sister francine was about 2 or 3, she told me i was ugly. which is to say, i wouldn't really mind if these canada-based cousins stay that way, as in, based in canada. i love them in many ways, other ways that i don't mind missing.

after dinner at the new, spacious, and more appetite-inducing harbour city at ayala center, melissa, anya, carlyn, iana and i headed to cheesecake, etc at the IT park and ordered 3 kinds of cheesecakes: berry strawberry, chocolate turtle pie and belgian double cream. melissa, iana and i ordered respectively, but all five of us had forks ready.

the belgian double cream was the house specialty but it had the usual cheesecake-yishness (oh, gawd, what am i writing) that the cheesecakes at starbucks had, and which i think is too familiar, unoriginal and boring. the berry strawberry had two layers to it, interesting in its own ways that made it a good order. but what i would recommend is the chocolate turtle pie. my sister  probably ordered it because she adores turtles, but it turned out to be the best pick of the night. 

but like any plate of goodness in front of me, not a small piece remains untouched. we all made the great swipe, but i swiped it clean.

back to this moment.

a college classmate text messaged last week to say she just gave birth. i was very thrilled that somebody i know just gave birth, but the big problem was there was only one person i know is pregnant, and she confirmed herself she was really pregnant only this year!

"sori bt i lost all my contacts due 2a celphone breakdown. Pls identify urslf. Drs only 1person i know/remember is pregnant... marge?" went my reply.  

it was johnna. imagine my shame, but i wasn't able to clear it. i only wonder if she'd invite me to her baptism. but dearest johnna, i am so happy for you. since i wasn't able to hide my shame, if you want the name evanescence for your baby girl, i'd give it to you. can i just suggest eva as the nickname?

mamita in all her sweetness invited carlyn and me to dinner at krua thai's tonight. cai and i arrived late, having driven all the way from mango avenue to banilad, passing through a [surprise!] sudden traffic -- thus delay -- along the barracks at archbishop road. when we arrived, they practically pushed all the dishes to our side of the table since they were 3/4 done with the food on their plates. 

the manga-hilaw salad with the chicharon-ish mix. the spicy, weird, but i SO love buongon salad. the fried ribs. the sweet and sour fish. the crab rice. the bagoong rice. i love thaiiiiii.

mamita hugged me twice on friday night after dinner. poppy and mother were here to attend the funeral of tito gabbie (the tito who was always there but whose name we'll only ever know about him). at mamita's room, i kissed her goodbye and thanks-for-the-dinner (of boneful adobo-ed eel, YUM). she pulled me in for a hug the second time. i just love those moments.

such a treasure.

all along, tito gabbie (the tito who was always there but whose name we'll only ever know about him) had a heart disease. he was a blue baby, and since birth, had time ticking not only at his wristwatch, at his bedside alarm clock, at the kitchen clock, but at his heart. every beat for him was a lease on another minute, another hour, another day alive. not that it made any difference to his life. he was a 24-hour shadow to his mother, tia diding (of whom we are not so fond). he was a wallflower; not even a flower, but a root fixed to wherever the rest of the plant went. he was a corner fixture. i wonder if he ever cared joining us in our table.

we'll never know. he's buried 5 feet over the ground now, concealed in an elf grave with a 2 ft by 2 ft opening, his box that's 1 ft long and half a foot wide rested well in it. 

he's reduced to ashes. pieces so small. what do ashes become through time?

may he bloom in peace.       

6-year-old edward, on wanting to marry my sister iana.

"edward, you want to marry ate iana?"

"yes, when i turn 16."

"but she'll be SO old by then."

a broken face. "how old?"

"so OLD. and you can't marry her."

"why?"

"she's your ate, she's your cousin."

a face directly hid under the covers. when uncovered, appeared so innocent a face with eyes about to well up but never did.

my father in just one day made a year of dreaming, planning, focusing, losing focus, re-focusing stop. 5-digits. a leaf-thin, waif, willowy, yellow paper. his signature [that i have already forged a couple of times with his consent, mind you]. and i have it.

thank you poppy, you will know eventually how much that meant, this means to me.

i have a new toothbrush. i left my worn but well-loved stick in ormoc and i only realized this when i was preparing for work the next day. yes, i did not toothbrush on that workday.

my new one makes my gums bleed. the brush is too uncomfortable and too long; takes some getting used to.

my legs are really dry. call it a spell, long running after refusing to put on lotion back in my high school days. i was stubborn such that i thought it SO unnecessary to use up those few seconds for lotion rubbing. now, i lotion before i get to bed. mega cute bumps are budding all over my body (hangover from boracay, obviously) and i am always tempted to pick on them before harvest time so i put lotion on to turn off my hands (i hate the silking feeling of lotion, body oil.)

i look at my curls and find it unnecessary to fuss over it too much as well; too much to me is even just putting cream to keep it curly. i am such a slob. well, mamita's birthday is over, boracay is over, and its only purpose that i haven't ticked off yet is to keep my hair look unbalding. it's doing a pretty good job.

ayos!

my toes are still ugly.
my fingers, too; specifically my left thumb.

i haven't gone to the gym for almost a month now. i was introduced to the bestfriend of the boyfriend of my colleague setty long before he is scheduled to arrive (in november). by introduce, i mean, setty mentioned pairing me up with him. so the point of the gym is... that i have to get back to it! as in, quick!

haha. well, considering that 2007 is doing a very good job as my best year to remember (during which a lot of FIRSTS has transpired very well than expected), i think getting a boyfriend will not be too far away.

now in comes vanity.