EMO NIGHTS

Tonight I must have cried three times.
After a long monotonous day at work, I went straight to my friend's house and we talked about things that mattered a lot to us. I could not help but feel overwhelmed.
There were sadness, happiness, fear, uncertainty and a million other emotions that were racing to hit my tearducts and make me burst into big fat tears.

It's true that when you lose something, you gain something else.
Well, if I were to gain his love and support over and over again, let me lose everything I've got. His ever-present concern for me is enough to make us survive this place, where people can eat me alive.

It's also true that if things are not meant for me to have, then I won't have them.
But I know exactly what I deserve. A decent lifestyle.

A nice place to live in. Check!
Good jobs. Shit.
Go out and meet new people. Check!
Time to relax and have fun. Two-day weekends. Shit.
Nice dinners. Check!
Home cooked food. Shit.

Lots more.
I'll turn all the shits into checks soon, I swear.
But for now let me wipe my tears.

WTF is this day!

This is definitely a bad day.
My period is taking a backseat, but assholes are taking over!
At work where most of the people have never heard of manners and racism is discreetly embraced, I try to keep a straight face and pretend to do my work efficiently, when deep inside, I am falling apart.

Several reasons.
I hate the nature of my job, I hate papers, I hate sitting all day long and I hate taking orders from dumb people.
I hate waking up early in the morning knowing that my boss doesn'give a damn about my career, and the interview I had with him on the day I started was baloney.
I hate not being able to take long showers and smell the soap suds and blow bubbles in the bath tub (ok I'm not a sopa model but I need it to recharge!!!).
I hate my carlift driver who thinks she owns DUbai, and has the nerve to refuse to take me home because she's spending too much on petrol. Well, she smells like petrol!

By the time I get home I want to just forget about everything and sing songs in the bathroom, smoke a cigarette before napping, and watch AFrican shows on Colin's new plasma TV. (He rocks!!!)

Right

Why do I never believe those cheesy forwarded text messages that say things like, "Don't stop loving etc etc...because you never know when the right one will come." What a bunch of BS! How many freaking Right Ones do you meet in this lifetime? As long as there are trees to produce divorce papers, we'll never know.

My first Right One couldn't have been more honest with me on the night we broke up. "We've lost that spark. And I met a cute Chinese girl."My second Right One wasn't right for me at all, according to my friends and later on, firsthand experience. Well, how many other Right Ones will come to rain on my single parade?

And the not-so-right ones? I love them. They're fun and hard to get and they drop me like a hot tamale.

See the conflict?

Is there a not-s0-right one that can turn into the Right One?

Yeah RIGHT!

I Hate Working

It's true that wherever you work, there will be people who will disagree with you, and even bring you down for them to climb the ladder of success. I learned that smiles and Good Mornings have no effect on people's impression of you, and you just have to learn that one day at a time, as you are warming up in a new company, in the company of new people. You can't be too trusting or too happy to do things for them, because they will eat you alive. They will make you do overtime work without overtime pay, ask you to do some of their work with the knowledge that you already have more than enough work to do, and blame you for some things that you are not even supposed to get involved in. Don't you just hate it? All your passion for work goes out the window, along with the cigarette butts that, for a few minutes, console you when you feel like throwing things inside the office.

And your other passions are affected, thus my very short blog entries lately.

Like this one.

zeena time

Today i want to...

1. Shop for shoes
2. Take pictures of myself
3. Write in my journal
4. Go out with someone
5. Clean my nails
6. Make my bed
7. Take a hot hot bath
8. Get a massage
9. Take a long walk
10. Watch movies

But guess what? I'm not going to.
I'm going to sleep!

friday morning nothings

Hi, last night I spent 4 hours changing my blog design. At first I thought I'd email Jel to get some help, but I figured she was busy with work, so I forced myself to learn and do it. Miraculously, I found out it was just a bunch of copy-and-pastes. tedious, but simple. Almost clerical, if I didn't have fun choosing colors and designs and, most importantly (yup, even more important than my literature itself), my picture. The picture I had in the previous layout was ok, but I just thought I didn't look genuinely happy in it, and I asked myself why the hell I made it a tiled background. So here, a new picture. Happier, more colorful, less angsty.

By the way, where's Jel?!

Artificial Sweetener by No Doubt

Oh yes I’m guilty

For leasing myself out

Not ready to go up for sale

Can’t seem to give it up

Stubborn, so selfish

I’m showing off the worst in me

The return of Saturn

Assessing my life

Second guessing...

I’m full of artificial sweetener

My heart’s been deceitful

It’s all artificial sweetener

I’m faking I love you’s

You’re forcing me to

You really deserve love

I want to love you

But I can’t seem to find myself

My wilting effort

Our progress report

I’m only sure that I’m not sure

I shudder to be honest

Who’s behind it all now?

Who’s the author?

I’m full of artificial sweetener

My heart’s been deceitful

It’s all artificial sweetener

I’m faking I love you’s

You’re forcing me to

Re-read, re-write, redo, undo

I’m stuck on this page

I was born two weeks late

Is that why I hesitate?

I’m on the fence

Push me off it

I want to be on your side now

And keep a promise

I’m full of artificial sweetener

My heart’s been deceitful

It’s all artificial sweetener

My heart’s been deceitful

I’m faking I love you’s

You’re forcing me to

men, wine and bacardi

I am really not tired of life.
I just keep on saying that
whenever I get tired of men.
But men are not life.
On the contrary,
they can actually kill.
Then I'd need my friends for life support.
Then I'd be revived and . . . what?
Another man comes along.
I am never tired of life,
and I am never tired of men.
But again, men are not life.
Heck, I just date a man
just to feel how good life support is.
Oooookay I really make sense after wine and Bacardi.
Ok I might get tired of men,
But I'm never going to get tired of wine and Bacardi.

thursday nights

"You look like an angel, walk like an angel, talk like an angel. You're a devil in disguise."

And then some dancing and singing and joking.

What better way to spend your Thursday night?

I love you guys.

tacky songs

This evening I was having wine with my friends while listening to the CD that our friend Wyson sent us. It's got our favorite songs that we could dance to and sing along with. And suddenly this particular song played and a million memories came back to my mind. My first relationship's theme song. I did not know whether to throw up or melt. You know how certain songs make us nostalgic and not do anything but just sit (with a glass of wine of course) and think about how good the old days were, but you'd rather keep in sitting idly wiht your wine than relive them?

"I bought a ticket to the world
And now I've come back again
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh I want the truth to be said."

Yeah guess what that song is. Tacky, old and overused, but at that time we loved it, and we loved singing it over and over again. And now it's just something that reminds me of the past, not good or bad, but just reminiscent of so many moments. Fights in restaurants, trips out of town, nervous breakdowns, trouble with the police, planning for our future that turned out to be non-existent. God. How could a three-minute song bring back a million memories?

It makes me "remember the boy, but I don't remember the feeling anymore".
(That's a line from another tacky song that I sing whenever I get my heart broken.)

the big 5 personality test

I'm a O30-C4-E48-A32-N66 Big Five!!

nanlalamig ako

Dubai thoughts

Spoons and forks and wine glasses
and funky-smelling clothes
Cheap, fragrant fabric softener
Expired cheese and mottabal
DVD player playing with us
Decides to swallow The 40-year-old Virgin
and leaking toilet pipes
Loose wire in the main switch
That caused the A/C to stop
supplying us with oxygen
Negotiating with car lifts
And budgeting food
And budgeting my life
And making sure that next year
financial strife doesn't strike
And making sure that family knows I'm safe
That my friends still remember me
That I guard my heart from men
Who guard themselves from me!
And making sure that I go home
Not only disillusioned
But stronger
and better
and wiser
and thinner!

why am i fat?

NOT helping.

I read all about diuretics and they're supposed to flush all my water weight down the toilet.

I must have had three gallons of water today and even gulped down a cup of black coffee, because these are the best natural diuretics.

Well, why do I feel like a giant tree trunk after a nasty rain? Why am I swollen? It keeps me from having a swell time.

I can't enjoy food, and I certainly DON'T enjoy starving. And I don't enjoy walking down the street under the hot hot sun as my thighs engage in a bitchfight. And I don't enjoy jogging around the neighborhood as the humidity approaches 100% every single day. And I don't like the idea of growing another chin, as I see no use for it. I don't like the fact that I can't fit into my fabulous outfits and wear make up to make me look like I only have two cheeks.

WHY? WHY DO I HAVE TO GAIN WEIGHT EVERY SINGLE SHITTY MINUTE?

Well I'm going to lose weight whatever it takes.

My motivation? Check this out:

http://www.jesusseesus.com/swinegod/swinegod3.html

yikes!

God, I slept for only two hours!
I look like a corpse!
Luckily I don't smell like one.
Back to work!

yesterday

Yesterday I took my mind off the things that made me sadder and sadder.

I climbed the tallest and grandest happiness ladder.

A leap of faith that gave me more and more hours of sleep.

A reason to have less and less secrets to keep.

Out of the dark, into the light, welcome home, prodigal lover.

Who shall love me more than myself, with whom living is so much better.

the spectacular MADINAT JUMEIRAH

*PHOTOS BY COLIN AND ME

Give me a B!

When I want to bitch about men and think of them as the worst creatures ever made, and wish they could actually disappear from the face of the earth, I talk to my girlfriends. And if all my girlfriends gathered around me and joined forces, I honestly believe they can make any guy go to hell for messing with me.

"Well Zeena, I thought he was too dumb for you anyway."

"Yeah, and don't tell me you've NEVER complained about how his armpits stink. COME. ON."

"Snap out of it, Zeena. You'll find someone better, and with a smaller nose."

"Like he had HALF the brain to stick with you."

"You're fabulous. And he can bury his face in that whore's genitals forever, but you? You'll paint the town red with your charms."

And 10 minutes into the bitterness banter, I feel so much better, like no one can shatter me. I am more confident than ever, knowing that 20 other girls are wishing he would die.

However, if I want enlightenment, I turn to my guy friends. THey can be painfully honest, but at least I'm not kept in the dark. And then I know that it's not MY fault the whole thing didn't work out.

"We're really stupid Zeena. The problem with us is, we know it when see a great girl but we don't know how to keep her."

"Testosterones. Not love, honey."

"He doesn't like you anymore. And even if everybody thinks you're the greatest girl in the world, he will never come back to you."

"He stopped calling you? He's calling another girl. Your Saturday nights are someone else's."

"You're an old cow. He's found a new one."

And even though I feel like the one disappearing from the face of the earth, I just move on and hope that the next guy will have less testosterones.

Ohhh forget enlightenment. Screw truth.

Given a choice, I like my cheerleaders better than my coaches. Call it bitterness, call it bitching, go ahead dude.

I call it sisterhood.

Too much

I think I'm too much of a pleaser and giver. Sometimes I say yes without even thinking, and that gets me into trouble. On any given day at any given time, I'm always suppoed to be in at least two places.

I have dinner with A but am scheduled to talk on the phone with B. Now C is a little early, so I have to cut the dinner with A short. Now D wants me to come over to her house because it's her sister's birthday.

BY the end of each week I am broke and tired and when I finally hit the bed, lonely and alone.

Not that I force myself to do these things. I just like to be around my friends. And it would break my heart to displease anyone. Anyone.

Plus I'm struggling with my weight right now. I can't always eat out and hang out eating lard off my Starbucks hot chocolate and stop working out because I have to be somewhere with someone, or else I'd feel bad.

Lose-lose situation. I choose to stay home at work out, I get lonely. I choose to hang out, I get fat. Fat, lonely, I don't know which one is worse. If only lose-lose situations can make you lose weight, I'd become the biggest loser of them all.

Let's see how it goes.

(Lightbulb moment!)
Hey, maybe spreading myself too thinly can actually make me thin.

(And vanish into thin air.)

don't mess it up

I am not under an order to make the world a better place. Something like that. That's what Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites said.

Well, ok, some people think they don't owe the world anything, and that may be true, but please please please don't mess it up!

I am angry at people who claim to want the best for everyone, when all they want is to benefit from every single good thing they do unto others.

Well, thanks but no thanks. You suck!

idle times. best moments.

“The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that gives us our own small satisfactions.” - Billy Joel

There's no business like show business.



Playing hooky.


Pinks in black.


Annika.


Perfect . . . Moments!


Manage me?


Our way or the high way.


New hair.


Beauty pageant.


Admin.


Cousins.


Drunken Marzers.


Bread night.


Meeting myself.


One fine afternoon


Lunch Galera-style.


Japanese food and gossip


NOT interested.


Carpet pictorial.


Boat woman.

Date to Hate, Date to Mate!

I've been dating since I was 15. Where is he?
-Sex In the City

Seriously. Dating is proving to be a very tiring thing. After my first serious relationship, I went on a blind date spree. At first it was so much fun, whether the guy and I clicked or not -- I would go home either thinking, "This guy is very promising. He'd make a good boyfriend.", or "Oh good, another funny story for my friends' enjoyment." In the beginning of course, I was really hoping each blind date would have relationship potential. However, the odds of meeting a guy I really liked were 1 in 38209384019238418490123. And now, while I haven't given up blind dating completely, I look forward to gross or weird experiences with the men I meet so I can go home and impart bedtime anecdotes to Fifi. Not a very noble or sensible objective, but regardless of what I want to achieve in a date, dating is fun. That's why it has been going on forever, amidst all the jaded men and women (esp women!!!) who have gone through this phase and failed. Because it's really fun! A few friends told me I should publish a book about my blind dates. Maybe I'll do that later. For now, a brief summary of each date is enough.

1. MISTER POGI
A friend phoned me at 4 in the afternoon and said she wanted to set me up on a date at 830 PM with P.A., a bastketball player I'd been stalking since I hit puberty. I was elated, and 3 seconds after our phone conversation, I was frantically searching for what to wear. I was at the coffee shop 30 minutes earlier, and come 8:30, P.A. was nowhere in sight. Shit. Was I stood up? Of course not. Worse. Some guy came up to me and introduced himself as P.A.'s cousin, and said he was my date. Whoever ASSIGNED him to be my date? I was furious, not just because P.A. used his name to get his cousin a date, but also because his cousin was a complete loser. His hiphop attire sent me running outside the coffee shop, but he followed me and said he wanted to have a couple of drinks with me. Trapped. So I took him to this bar where my friends went every night after work. When my friends saw hiphop guy they told me to ditch him then and there. I was trying to be nice to avoid karma, so I listened to him go on and on about how he wanted to be an actor, that he was a runner up of Mister Pogi, and he was P.A.'s best friend. GOD. He had a digital camera with him, and showed me some of P.A.'s pictures. Well, where was that stupid hunk? Why was I sitting with his cousin, who committed grammatical mistakes every other sentence? With the help of some beer (not even half a bottle), I said I had work and stormed out of the bar.

2. THE MASON
A guy from my former work said he had a friend who was a nice guy and needed a date. I happily obliged . . . until I saw him. He was three times thinner than me, had thick glasses, braces, and later on I would find out that he was also had the dullest personality in Metro Manila. HE talked about masonry, because then everyone was reading Da Vinci COde, and I just couldn't stand the fact that he shut me up whenever I made a comment when I was just trying with all my might to be polite. He preached about the principles of masonry with sheer conviction that he looked like he was going to bite my nose if I made one comment that suggested he may be wrong. Well, the stupid part is, he wasn't a member of the Mason, just a fan. I thought it would be best to just let him talk while we were walking heading towards the movie house inside the mall. After all, once the movie would start, he would shut up. And I REALLY made sure he did.

3.OAKLEY NIGHTMARE
I date this guy who worked for Oakley. He was 6 ft flat, had pure Chinese blood but born and raised in the Philippines. He was the complete epitome of rudeness. We went to a restaurant and while I was watching the way he visciously chewed his pork barbecue, I wondered when he would offer food to me. I absolutely didn't eat anything that day because I was looking forward to a sumptuous meal with a gentleman. Well, I had neither. Afterwards we headed to the coffee shop, where he just sat while I bought myself a latte. Oh, he didn't just sit. He took a sip of my latter, which was the grossest thing a man could do on a first date. Well, that was until he brought out his Oakley borchuers and explained to me the technology behind the manufacturing of Oakley sunglasses. I don't remember how we ended our dinner, but he wrapped it up like this: "If you were my girl, I'd take care of you. But if you ever hurt me, I could snap you like a twig." Ok, mofo, no second date for you!

4. THE UNDERWEIGHT BAD BOY
Well, this guy was just 100 lbs flat, and I doubt that his head weighed anything at all. He'd been struggling to graduate from college at 24 years old, liked car racing and was known to collect girls. On our first date he was almost an hour late, and looked really weak. He was sick and was confined the next day. I thought we did not have anything in common and that he was definitely not relationship material. Two months later he became my boyfriend. And four months later I broke up with him.

And this was the point where I asked myself if the problem was with men or me. Oops.

Well, there WERE times when I would go home alone because the guy found me too dark, too giddy, too guly, too whatever, too too too too. And I just went through with that crazy phase, not giving up and not losing my confidence.

Well, now I'm dating again and though I know that sooner or later my dating energy will plateau again, I still go through with it.

Because the last time I did my online research about dating and relationships (yes I do that, got a problem with that?), there is nothing wrong with what I am doing.

Or is there?

heart attack

You gave me a heart attack.
I thought I froze my heart a long time ago,
and I would never be affected by anyone or anything.
But you spoke of something and suddenly I had this pain in my chest.
It was as if you said that to kill me.

I would wake up in the middle of the night
to hear your voice echoing in the room.
The same words would pierce right through my heart.
And I would not dare anyone that I was having a heart attack.

My heart used to be fine. Open. Alive.
But I hid it when some people decided to ignore it.
And now, you want to take a peek.
No please.

Not another heart attack!

hurt? happy? halt!

THE RAMPANTLY DISCUSSED, MOST DREADED FEELING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
-Neil Gaiman


I will slap you in the face if you tell me that you have never been hurt in your life. Everyone gets hurt, in more ways than one, and this is one reason I think that maybe God is fair, because he made us ALL experience this horrible horrible feeling. Some face it like dignified warriors, some play safe to evade it, and some, after playing around it, find themselves right in front of it, and they have no choice but to face the greatest doom in their lives, when the thing that they do unto others hit them in a splitsecond.

I know hurt, all right. I was acquainted with it at a very young age, and as time rolled around to make me 23 years old, hurt has become my best friend. Too close for comfort. As a child, I was pinched by elders, kicked by a classmate, spanked by my grandmother and bitten by a dog. I had to get anti-tetanus shots, and get tested for rabies. Although it turned out that the dog was clean, I knew the pain was rabid. And it spread inside me, not only throughout my flesh, but somewhere much deeper. Much deeper, until it seeped into every part of my body, such that even words could easily hurt me. People called me names and criticized me for the way I looked or spoke, or dressed. And though it would be easy for me to defend mysef or just go out there and be one of them cool guys, I was too hurt to do anything about it. Yes, hurt can lead to paralysis.

And when I stepped into college, that's when it became full-blown. One person after the other hurt me. Intentionally, unintentionally, verbally, mentally, and they made sure that every cell of my body was aching. After realizing that devastation did not equal death, I resolved to keep myself from getting hurt. Ever. As much as possible.

I'm not a bad person. No, I don't want to hurt anyone else. I don't really believe in deliberate revenge. I'd attempted it, and it did not work for me.

Right now I'm just a steady person. Well, trying to be, but getting there. I don't hurt people in order to avoid getting hurt. I simply don't hurt and try not to hurt. And it takes a little more than a prayer to carry on with this journey to inner peace.

I became a desperate people pleaser, who tried to agree with everyone and kiss their asses to avoid arguments.

I became a monster of a lover, transformed myself from naive and all-giving to wise and cold.

I became a "yes-sir, yes-sir" employee who did whatever the boss said. A robot.

Well, I'm not 100% happy with what I'm doing (Oh I SO know that), but maybe by not letting anyone or anything hurt me, I am opening myself to happiness. I've got a sign on my chest that says "NO HURT ALLOWED. HAPPINESS WELCOME." Ok that sounded cheesy and downright tacky. But yes, it's what my chest says!!!

And right now, I consider myself in limbo -- not pained, but not happy. But if I'm not happy yet, what keeps me going through every single day? That question pushed me off my bed one midnight, and I could not sleep until I tried to find an excuse for my new-found philosophy.

What keeps me going if I'm not getting hurt, but not happy yet?

I guess it's the consolation that those who tried to hurt me, regardless of whether they succeeded or not, are not really happy with what they've done.