I close my eyes and everything goes black. I turn up the live version of "Pull Me Under" by Dream Theater to the unbearable point of loudness in an attempt to reproduce the rush that the audience got when they played this. In my opinion, a band's mettle is truly tested when they’re playing in front of a live crowd. It’s only then that you’ll see if they can actually pull off their songs or if they’re merely products of heavy studio tweaking. Well, I have to hand it to them – they are good.

The crunch of the guitar. The pounding of the drums. The ear-splitting, encompassing noise so thick you can take a bite out of it. The song ends and the crowd cheers.

My eyes open, and it’s back to reality. I ponder about my post call-center life. As of now, it’s just freelance writing prospects for me, and not many to boot. I intend to supplement the income from our tutorial business with my non-existent writing gigs. I hope that turns out well.

Less than a month to go. Tick-tock.

Of Job Prospects and Wasted Cash

So I sent sanitized versions (sans profanity) of some of my blog posts to a prospective employer that's looking for freelance writers. Hope I have what they're looking for. It took him a week to reply to my first email so it'll probably take just as long get word from him. Still looking elsewhere though...

I also applied for the third time to get my NBI clearance. I had done this before at the city hall, but I had forgotten to go back and claim it. It was consequently forfeited twice and wasted a good amount of money for the application fee. This time, they came over to the building we work in, so it was a painless process. No lines, no sweltering heat. It'll take a week for them to remit the actual form to me.

Just got home to gas up the car. Upon entering our village, an oncoming tricycle cut my lane to park at the nearby terminal on my side. I managed to slow down and honked my horn out of anger. The wife told me the guy’s name was Pablo, apparently another member of this village’s hardcore community. She advised me to take the car tomorrow, for he might wait for me in some dark corner. Fuck, he was the one that cut me off, now I have to pay for the grave outrage of honking my horn at his dumb ass? Oooh, hardcore indeed.

At the start of our nanny’s tenure, I had made it clear that she would take her rest day when it was mine as well. Furthermore, I had told her that my rest days don’t necessarily fall on the weekends every week. Well, now she’s requesting that she needs to take her off on Saturday. The only way for her to do that is if I’m on the night shift, which I think will be all that’s left for me anyway. To be fair, she’s pro-active when it comes to chores and has other good traits. But what I don’t like is that she neglects Dan’s back when he’s perspiring. And since she’s a bit old, I sometimes worry if she’s strong enough to carry my kid – she looks a bit on the frail side.

Just venting here.

Off To a Rough Start

Coming from a two-day rest period, today didn't quite start out as well I wanted to. I woke up late, and since it was way too early (3:45 am) there wasn't any food yet. The water I was preparing for my bath was dirty. The water in our area is drawn from a deep well so when they clean the huge water tank for our area, it usually yields some residue. It was a good thing that we had some clean water stored in a separate container set aside for shortages, etc.

Since there were no tricycles around at the time, I had to walk to the gate of our village. I'm pretty much used to this when my shift is this early but today was different. It was a nice and rushed walk and I was inhaling the cold morning air when I heard barking from behind me. Now I'm used to passing by stray and owned dogs; they don't really do anything but bark at me. This time though I knew something was up because I recognized the particular dog as I turned around. It was the mean one that was usually chained up by his drunkard of a master.

To my suprise, this son of a bitch was free to roam the streets and was coming up behind me fast. I thought it was useless trying to run so I stopped in my tracks and faced him. I menacingly swung my backpack his direction to scare him off. It worked - he barked and backed off. It looked like he was gonna try again so I did the same thing. I thought to myself it wasn't so bad since nobody saw me as it was too early for anyone to be around. Of course, someone had to be walking nearby at that hour thereby bearing witness to my skirmish.

Even if the ride to work was fast, I still arrived late from all the delays I had. And I left my gel at home so my short hair looks like a bit of a train wreck from the strong draft from the jeepney trip. GREAT. Nothing a little trip to washroom can't fix I guess.

Oh, I'm having second thoughts about sending the email to that person. Going to back to my last entry, the other thing I learned is to be selective with the person you want to have an honest talk with. In some cases, it'll just blow up in your face. Which is why I'm hesitant now; I don't think he really gives a shit about me, let alone what I have to say.

Choking On That Jagged Little Pill

It's usually when I'm lying in bed at night that I have a few epiphanies of sorts. Right after putting my kid to sleep last night and observing him in that peaceful state, thoughts came flooding in once again. In the dark, I was pondering on a recent scuffle I had with someone. We had exchanged a series of nasty words via IM, and one thing led to another. Shortly after, I had done something out of anger. Realizing my lapse in judgment, I worked up the nerve to apologize to the said person. Initially, I was thinking about just letting things blow over and act like nothing happened. But then, my conscience and embarrassment was gnawing away at me so much that I couldn't bear NOT to patch things up.

So I went over and made the first move and explained my side, the reasons behind my anger, and of course apologized. Hostility gave way to understanding on both sides, and mutual admissions of guilt were exchanged. All in all, it went well. We were cool after that. But what was keeping awake was the fact that I was so determined to fix things with that person. Looking back, I made the first move because I couldn’t bear to see another breakdown of human relations occur in my life. These recent years, I’ve become familiar with the bitter aftertaste when you end up creating a chasm of misunderstanding with a friend or family member. Prior to those recent years (college onwards), I never knew what it was like not be on speaking terms with someone you were previously close with (with the exception of a couple of the neighbors I grew up with).

Sure, I had spats with my playmates as a kid, but those were trivial and petty; everybody goes through those while growing up. But when I hit college, I realized what a nauseous sensation it was to be estranged from someone you shared good times with before. I couldn’t stomach the feeling of someone hating you for whatever reason. The most probable reason why I’m still bummed out about the rift between my college blockmates is that I put my pride on the line. In the name of reconciliation, I hung my self-esteem out to dry so they could wring it out for what it was worth. But what did I get out of it? Nothing, except a hefty dose of conceited, backstabbing goodness. I put myself out there and they didn’t even have the decency of talking about what happened (well at least not to my face). If their beef with me was so bad, why didn’t they have the balls to say it in front of me?

To this day, some deep, buried part of me is still pissed off. Why? I had put myself out there and tried to be as honest and frank as possible, even if it was difficult. I had admitted my shortcomings and earnestly tried to be a civilized human being. Still, that wasn’t enough for them. For all the courage I mustered up to talk about sensitive issues, I just got burned in the end. Adding insult to injury, they acted like we were good friends again and like nothing happened when I met up with them several years after.

Right at that moment last night, it just hit me. After all these years of reflection, it’s apparent that there’s really nothing wrong with me. I had messed up, but not that bad. If they couldn’t find it in themselves to at least acknowledge my initiative then that’s their problem. With those thoughts, I can breathe better now. I’ve probably known it all along, but now I can freely say that I don’t need their goddamn approval. Not anymore, fuckhead spineless little shits.

So going back to my recent fracas, it just occurred to me that I wasn’t going let that happen - NOT AGAIN if I could help it. I was extremely relieved to know that my apology was accepted and that we could be on good (NOT just speaking) terms again. This time, I was actually applauded for what I did. I mentioned to the person that I know when I’m wrong, and that I couldn’t bear to see another relationship in my life go sour. I was told to my face, “it takes a man to do that”. Whew, that felt good. I guess I still have a scrap of decency left in me after all.

There is one other person I’ve been meaning to send an email to. After all that talk about being brave, somehow I can’t bear to talk to that someone face to face for now. Let’s see how that one goes.

Fight Club

This is too hardcore for my movie-watching, broken prose-writing, pseudo musical critic self. I had just finished watching Red Dragon (which was already gruesome for me) when my wife informed me that her younger brother had gotten himself in a tussle last night. He was peeing somewhere by the sidewalk in one the streets of our village when a bunch of guys decided to get their kicks by picking on him. Now I've criticized him for being such a lazy bum at times, but he's a nice guy really. And that comment has nothing to do with the fact that he actually beat his would-be assailant, much to their surprise. From what I heard, he managed to get the guy in a headlock and proceeded to pound the asshole's face with his fist. Talk about a makeover.

Apparently, the said hooligans are members of a well-known fraternity. It still makes my innards turn at the local concept of such organizations. In any case, my wife thinks they're just posing as members of the said group. She'll find out herself as soon as she gets the name of the guys that attacked her brother. The wifey used to hang out with a rough crowd back in high school and college so she knows a lot of people from the fraternity in question. She'll make a couple of phone calls I guess.

"Make a couple of phone calls" - is that mafia-like or what?

Oooooh, hardcore indeed.

I have to make this count

Whoopee. This is my first post from home. Our dial up connection is agonzingly slow, so I have to make the most of the moment. They fixed the phone line last night so they could hook up a new line for the PC. It was ok last night, but after trying to download YM it crapped out all of a sudden. The pages were loading slow and everything was basically screwed up from then on. arrrrgggh.

Ahh, where to begin? Well, I extended my resignation notice until the middle of May for various reasons - namely because my other job prospects were not so certain after all. I intend to work part-time so I can divert some time to our business as well. Still in mid-air as I mentioned before - the transition is still nail-biting. Sheesh.

A new nanny came in today. She seems nice enough and has all the qualities we're looking for: clean, polite, efficient, proactive, and friendly with kids (she already has four grandchildren). I'm not raising my hopes if she turns out to be unfit for the job. We’ve been in between countless ones so far for me to care at this point. It would be nice though if she actually stuck around for at least a year or so. The longest one we had stayed for about six months.

I feel like I’m on the brink of doing something great with my life, but I don’t know how or when it’s gonna happen. Somehow, somewhere it’s going to follow through. Is that weird?

I’m going to post next about a couple of bizarre dreams I had recently. I think I’ve done something close to what they call lucid dreaming.

Cheers.