Negishi, T plus 16 months

 It's been over a year and it's only now that I found the will to write about my beloved Negishi. I teared up again the other day when some of his photos popped up on my featured photos and I couldn't believe how hard grief still hits me after all this time.

What's there to say about Negishi? How can you express the love you feel for a creature so gentle, lovable, and magnificent? A creature that you tended to when he was but a wee pup, a feisty dogteen, and a stately senior, ever the distinguished gentledog, even during the worst of his illness.

I guess I don't have anything much to say about Negishi without bawling like a baby. All I know is that I loved - still love - that creature ever so deeply. It hurts that he's gone forever and I miss him so terribly.

Belated Thanksgiving

One of my IG friends posted on his IG Stories things and people he was thankful for this year. I wasn't planning on doing anything like this, because I am thankful for everything 24/7, but I think I want to list down more significant things, people and moments I'm thankful for this year (so far).

Thankful for almost 11 years with Gishi. He left us July of this year and while that was one of the most emotionally painful things I've had to go through (and still going through) ever, I'm still thankful for the gift of companionship from the sweetest, gentlest, and most suplado dog I've ever had the pleasure of caring for - and vice versa. Love you forever, Gishibear.

Thankful for Miso and Moku, the two clowns who constantly brighten our days with their kitty antics, and well, anything they do actually. Someday, I'll install a camera in the living room and stream it so everyone can ogle them round the clock too.

Thankful for work. Really, honestly thankful because apart from money, it gives me such a great feeling of accomplishment when I'm able to solve a problem, or complete a project. It challenges me enough to keep me on my toes and not feel complacent about the stuff I know. It encourages me to keep learning new things and improve my skills. The bonuses and 14th month pay are super cool too.

Thankful for workmates who lift everyone up when we have the [professional] doldrums, by their enthusiasm and excitement. Also thankful to some workmates who irritate and annoy the hell out of me - they teach me patience and self-regulation (heh).

Thankful for our community's volunteers who astound me with their energy and sense of commitment to make the place that we live in, and the people around us, much better. Truly inspirational.

Thankful for friends old and new who still exert effort to keep in touch despite these introversion and self-isolation-nurturing times. 

Thankful for family members who remind us that we don't have to deal with things on our own, and that family is there to help and be helped.

And, always thankful for Pye for everything.

Happy belated thanksgiving, dear friends!

 

Meh.

 I don't fully understand myself. I've been swinging from feelings of terrible melancholia, numbing indifference, to horrible longings. I'm not certain if it's from being cooped up at home for oh so very long, or if it's creative impotence, or worse, both. 

I recently came across the profile of an acquaintance. He's about a few years younger than me, yet he seems to be where I was about a decade or two ago. I long to be in that state again, having the ideals and resolve of a person on a mission, rather than someone who's just riding it out until the end. The angst is real, but it's angst that drives you forward, and not angst that makes you loathe yourself. 

Ah.

Funny how listening to Jacob Collier's music makes me feel so youthful. I sometimes wonder how someone so young can have such tremendous passion for music, then I remember my own obsessions back when I was about his age. I guess I naively thought that getting on in years would further stoke the fires of passion, but alas, it seems like growing old makes one feel jaded and weary and numb about things lest they arouse such fiery emotions that may be too much for my (recently discovered) delicate constitution to handle.

Expressions

 I used to take pride in my ability to maintain a neutral facial expression in most social situations. Lately, it feels like that ability is now gone.

Keen observers would often comment on how I feel about something - which means that my face reflects what I feel almost instantaneously - and I don't think I like being read so easily like that. I would also oftentimes catch myself smiling absently at things I scroll past that tickle my fancy, be it puppies, kitties, steampunky things, cute kdrama actors, etc. Also discernible grimaces or scrunching up of my forehead and nose when confronted with unpleasantries (if there is such a word). 

I miss traveling so much that I sometimes find it hard to breathe (not covid-related) while going through travel articles and scanning past the flights I had to cancel this year.

A pull that gets stronger as days go by never fails to make its presence felt.

Lockdown

So we have been on lockdown, the so-called extreme community quarantine for 16 days now. While I relish not going out, having the option taken away from you makes a world of difference. It feels like I'm in prison, only getting the opportunity to sneak out to the parking mezzanine to get some sun once a day. When I'm on my clandestine outings, I raise my head to the sky, let the sun beat down on me, and savor the wind wafting through my hair. This really must be how prison feels. 

I've been missing LB and Pleasant Village so much, but I do appreciate the conveniences of living in the maw of the big city and having family nearby sending you precious provisions (like cake!)

Morning Walk

I'm making it a habit to walk around the neighbourhood in our last remaining weeks here at PV. Today, I said a jolly 'good morning' to everyone I encountered.

There was the well-tanned athletic gentleman manning and directing the Gardenia delivery trucks - his family distributes Gardenia in the area and we'd see big vehicles parked in front of their garage every morning, delivery guys loading crates of bread into the waiting trucks.

I also saw Raquel, a graphic designer over at World Fish, catlady, and occasional IRRI shuttlemate back when I was still working there. She just brought some cat food to one of the houses with a big yard, whose owner happily accepted the kittens she fostered - collected from the strays at IRRI.

I waved hello to Mr. L, who was busily tending to the piles of biodegradable waste that he and his staff are composting for their composted soil business.

My 'good morning' was met with a semi-hostile gaze from the elderly lady sweeping her yard, wife of the equally elderly grumpy gentleman who owns and tends the vacant lot beside our rented house.

The sun was shining but there was a gentle breeze that constantly wafts around the big old trees, rustling the overgrown bushes with late-year blooms, knocking Kamias off the vine, and disturbing the procession of big red ants with leaves and assorted plant debris.

Leaving Los Banos

We have booked our moving truck to haul the clutter of our lives back to manic Manila. While I think and say that the move back to Manila will be good for me career, and other-things-wise, I can't help but feel a huge lump of separation anxiety about leaving Los Banos. I'm also feeling a little sad about wrenching myself from this idyllic place, a place where dust doesn't gather as enthusiastically, where traffic jams in the area are a huge topic of conversations (rather than an accepted fact), and where Gishi happily deposits himself by the threshold all day watching the world go by.

Back and Forth

So the past year was quite an interesting roller coaster ride.

I quit my job, moved to Los Banos, worked at IRRI, met some interesting people, quit my job again, and returned to Deltek. It's been a dizzying ride but something that I think, no, feel, will resound for the rest of my life.

I'll probably tell my grandnieces and grandnephews about how P, Gishi and I spent a turbulent year (career-wise), and led a peaceful, bucolic life in Pleasant Village (yes, for real) at the foot of Makiling. I'll also tell them about all the rockstar-scientists of the rice-based agricultural research world and the bittersweet experience with the IRRI Ed team. I might mention that one time that I met Gretchen, the carabao.

I actually thought that I was making progress over at IE, and that I was doing significant work that impacts the whole rice-growing community and getting to be known as THAT person that does amazing instructional design things. But you know what? I knew that staying on would be too taxing mentally and emotionally AND would turn me into someone who's awfully bureaucratic and, well, them. I would've probably gone out of my mind after year 2.

While my return to DU plunges me back into the anonymity of the corporate jungle, I actually think that I'm learning so much more about my craft and I'm able to test out crazy ideas that would've been deemed too far out by the powers-that-be in the agricultural research sphere (ironic, isn't it?).

Isn't It Ironic, Don't You Think?

An emotional connection with someone emotionally unavailable.

Lines

Sometimes I wonder how far we've strayed from who we were 20, 30 years ago. I look at my HS friends and think about how life has beaten them down and lifted them up. I look at the lines on their faces, and I try to figure out if those lines were stamped by happiness, or torment.

BFT

Several years ago, E, my best friend, and I made a pact that once we're both in our 40s, we'd go on a best friends cruise and have cabin boys suck on our toes while sipping cocktails on the deck.

So last week, E turned 40, and we went on a best friends trip! We didn't go on that cruise, but we lazed on the beach at a beautiful, serene cove with everything taken care of, in a lovely resort that provided the quiet and calm we needed. The toe-sucking cabin boys didn't happen but the pool boy made sure that we had pinacoladas on the beach while watching the marvelous sunset. E did see a gorgeous pilot that made her mouth drop while waiting for our flight back (I saw the back of the pilot's baldish head and tattoos peeking out of his uniform sleeves) - that was perhaps best cheap thrill of the trip.

Next best friends trip would be a gay cruise, with some of our gay friends when we reach our 50s.

Cheers to best friends trips!

Please

I don't want to get so caught up in routines that I forget that I have a soul. That the world is larger, odder, and far more amazing than what I'm seeing.

2018 So Far

Started 2018 feeling more confused than ever. Somehow, everything that I want to happen doesn't seem to jive with everything around me. Everyday, I'm feeling more and more out of place here. I'm not sure if it's me or the people around me, but I feel like I'm being edged out little by little, inch by inch everyday.

POI

So, I have this tendency to obsessively stalk a person of interest and gather as much information about him/her. Sometimes, I get too immersed that when I do get to meet that person, I have to be careful to not spill that I know a lot about that person. It's creepy, I know.

I've been stalking this POI a lot recently for what reason, I don't really know. One thing led to another, and here I am, mulling over that person's life details in my head. I came across a YouTube clip of that person performing a song. I know that that person wrote it and it was beautiful and extremely sad. I felt bad for stalking that person and thinking like I blew the lid off an emotional can of worms, but I also can't help but feel drawn to that sadness that seems almost...delicious.

Clingy

Sometimes, you want to desperately cling to a fleeting, intense feeling just so you can be assured that you're still capable of that. That you are not as calloused and jaded as you think you are.

A Good Day

Nothing like a being in a cool office on a hot day, with fast internet, and this little ditty playing full blast on a pair of over-ear headphones:

It's going to be a good day.

Just One of Dem Dayz

My Childhood Heroes are Leaving

I've kept mum about the passing of Chris Cornell, but when I opened my Heaven is a Place on Earth playlist on Spotify on shuffle, Sunshower played. I'm still feeling the loss.

Funny, the Heaven is a Place on Earth playlist is made up of songs that make me feel fuzzy on the inside; songs that feel like heaven IS indeed a place on earth. Now, it's a bittersweet reminder that yes it can be but for people like Chris, leaving it is the only answer.