Holiday

The Manila norm is that the holiday season begins in September. Christmas lights dance on trees along streets while you wheedle your way home among early Christmas shoppers.

But what if there were no lights. What if there was a lack of Christmas shoppers. What if there was no Rustan's or C.O.D. (meron pa ba nito sa Cubao, dati pa 'to di ba?) to light up our nights and let us glimpse a mirage of what Christmas is all about.

It's like screaming in a forest where no one can hear you. From September 'til December.

Lonely? Nah.

Different, maybe.

Because you go through the motions --- you buy the tree, hang the decor, staple the lights, make the list, do the shopping --- but the emotions are not the same.

It's like a marriage gone to the dogs. You stay together because of the children. But there are no feelings left for each other, so you go through the motions, keep up the image, and pretend to be perfect. But the kids know. They always know.

Maybe, that's why it bothers me.

The kid inside me knows the motions and Christmas notions aren't as natural as they should be. It's all rushed, like a photograph of the beach taken on the fly, only because you promised the parents you'd send them pictures.

So if I scream unfairness for Christmas this year, will it matter, if I do it in my head?

If, in my heart, Christmas will happen on the 31st, will anyone other than me care?

I don't think they'd mind. I'd smile, chuckle, laugh. They expect this to comfort their own internal sorrows, and I will play to the crowd. I am a ham, admittedly. But inside, the holiday for me will begin where I am home. In his arms, everytime. In my family's embrace, even when we snarl and argue over the smallest things. With my closest friends whom I rarely see, but we still feel like the last time was only yesterday.

That's my holiday. And by God, I always celebrate!

Boston & Cambridge

Treated myself to a trip to Boston for my past birthday, together with the boyfriend and some friends. It was, in a word, DIFFERENT.

-Unlike Virginia, there is real traffic in the little city of Boston -- more like the traffic on EDSA during non-rush-hours.
-Unlike many past trips, this city tour was more historical. A lot of firsts in this city.
-I saw the grave of Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and James Otus -- pioneers of the American Revolution -- on a walking tour held by no other than James Otus himself (of course, he was a tour guide. It was surreal when he talked about his own burial ground hahaha).
-I stood in front of the old state house where the Declaration of Independence was first read in July 12, 1776.
-We passed the "corner store", where a lot of famous classic poets/writers got together, including Louisa May Alcott. I made sure to take a picture with me in front. Whooot-whoot!
-I took a picture of the first public school in the US, which greatly resembled the old administative building in the White House.
-We went skating in the frog pond in Boston Commons(first public park), where in the 1700-1800's, they punished murderers, witches, and quakers.
-We had dinner at Cheers, in honor of the famous show.
-We had a quick tour of Harvard Yard in Cambridge.
-We got on the USS Constitution, the first US Navy ship, for free!
-People would just cross the street out of nowhere. Of course, cars couldn't do anything as there was a state law that said pedestrians had right of way and cars could be fined a hundred dollars for not complying.
-It was my first time to see original paintings by Rembrandt and Whistler, among others, in the Isabella Simmons Gardner Museum.
-Living Room, a lounge bar on Mass. Ave., had the best set-up. You get inside to see people, with their shoes off lounging -- legs extended in front of them. There were sofas on the right, and carpetted wood with pillows on the left side, so you could just prop yourself up against the wall and relax. It is, by far, the best lounge I've been into.

Of course, it wasn't perfect (the weather was gray on Saturday, and extremely windy on Sunday), but I enjoyed it just fine.

Sigh, where should my next out-of-town-in-the-US-vacation be?

Cleanse

I know, I know. I've been yapping about my increased weight for months....

But I was actually doing something about it, which, in my book, gives me reason to b1tch about it (the operative words being 'IN MY BOOK').

Finally, after Thanksgiving, the boyfriend convinced me to go on a cleanse program with him. It's a 10-day regimen that cleans out the toxins in your body. The good things are: it will help jumpstart increased metabolism (i.e. for people too lazy to exercise) and there is absolutely no starving involved. The bad things, however, are: no suger/saturated fat/white rice/oils/processed starch/processed wheat/processed grain, and you have to drink a fiber drink in the morning that tastes like sludge.

That was the reason why I didn't write very much after Thanksgiving. I felt so low. I believe low sugar in the body causes you to feel tired because your body is trying to conserve what sugar it has (resisting metabolism). In fact, on the 8th day, I got totally depressed that the bf had to drive me all the way to Pentagon Mall to get a Starbucks after dinner. The food was abso-f>ckin-lutely terrible. I tried to stick with it and not whine, but there was just no taste to it. We ate fruits, boiled eggs, whole wheat bread, non-fat cottage cheese, vegetables, grilled chicken, grilled salmon, and wheat pasta, eating at least 5 times a day. No condiments allowed. 5 days into the cleanse, I discovered soy chips, but that didn't help much. Ugh, the things we do for health. I blame it all on me, for eating so much for roughly a year when I knew it wasn't good for me.

To make the story short, we finished it on December 9, the eve of my D-Day, and boy, was I relieved. I took my first real meal after 10 days, and did my stomach give me a kick! It grumbled...it wasn't used to all the processed fat and oils hahahaha. The irony of it all.

I'm back to normal eating now, but I am trying to watch what I eat. I think I lost at least 5 pounds in those 10 days, and I don't intend to put all those tasteless days to waste by eating my heart out hehehe.

Anyone out there wanna try it? Ping me, and I'll give you the package name of the Cleanse. ;D

Oh yeah, and I fit into my slacks again --- the ones that fit perfectly when I was around 98 pounds.

Woohooo!

Bachelor Parties

Someone told me that friends of soon-to-be-married men take the bachelor party as an opportunity to dissuade the guy from marrying the girl, or at the very least, to get even with the girl he's marrying. After all, the girl is taking away their best bud for life. Things'll never be the same again. No more drunken nights painting the town red, chasing after girls, or just hanging out being their masculine lazy selves.

So they go out, get the guy drunk, get him some lap dances, maybe a few pills or puffs, and then try to get him laid.

Tsk Tsk Tsk.

If anything goes wrong, they'll be sorry and admit that they knew all along that the girl did make him the happiest they'd ever seen him. That they didn't mean for this to happen. Wash my hands, will ya?

At the moment, though, 'woohooo, let's get reckless...this is your last chance to be a man.'

Boys.

And I thought only girls had this weird 'friend jealousy' thing going on.