Watching The World Burn

Sometime around 2005 I realized that Final Fantasy does not have a monopoly to thought-provoking and emotionally charged stories in video games. Just now, my wife and I are enjoying Persona 3 – this is immersive-RPG-experience-outside-of-Final-Fantasy #2 for us. #1 was two years ago when we played Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

This scene in particular staggered me. Karin’s pronouncement came as a total surprise following Yuri’s expression of his resolve despite the personal crisis he faced.

Sometimes it’s just enough to say it out. When the situation doesn’t provide for any other possibility and you face a dead end, with no other option but to turn around, sometimes the hopelessness can be alleviated by simply expressing how you feel without any expectations. Just say your piece and then move on.

What is that one one thing that is common to all people of all classes, ages, denominations, nationalities, ethnic groups and races?Â

We all like to eat.

There is one thing, however, that we all hate to eat. Our own words. In the human psychological make-up, the revulsion to swallowing one’s pride and retracting on self-imposed dogmatic principle is basic and elemental.

(Why am I talking like a college textbook publisher? I don’t know, must be bcos of teh sexy gal in dat pic :p )

This morning someone called me about a job opening in an ABS-CBN-owned company. ABS-CBN.  I told my wife about it and she started laughing. Why wouldn’t she? My intense dislike for that TV station is almost legendary owing to the sheer inanity of many… no… MOST of its programs (Kokey, anyone?). But hey, I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. A job prospect is always a blessing and an opportunity. Even if it is with a company that we dislike for whatever personal reasons we have. In this case, if it does come to a point when circumstances dictate that I work in ABS-CBN, what the hell else could I do?

For one thing, I could laugh. At myself. After all the times I bad-mouthed said broadcasting company, I’d end up working there after all. Wahaha. My wife is still laughing – it’s not often she sees me eating my own words. Which is fine, humiliating but fine. So what? It’s not gonna kill me. Who knows, this prospect might just lead to better things for us.

So yeah, I guess that’s the point I’m driving at. Pride notwithstanding, if you know retracting a sweeping statement that you previously declared dogma would result in things getting better, don’t hesitate. It won’t kill you. I’ve met a lot of people who won’t budge in their adherence to principles that they know had been leading them away from better opportunities just because they don’t have the balls to swallow their pride. Traditionalists. Cultured music aficionado wannabes who wouldn’t admit that they like alternative rock. “I can only work with this kind of people” pseudo-professionals. Subscribers to the people-in-a-relationship-should-stick-with-it-come-hell-or-high-water thought school.

Sometimes the opportunity one allows to pass just because of some pointless principle that really doesn’t serve any purpose other than give someone a false sense of “I’m a man of my word” honor is so huge that the waste is almost categorically criminal. Like shredding a 1000-peso note.

I’m posting this knowing full well that to practice what I’m preaching, I have to welcome the prospect of working in an ABS-CBN company. I still don’t like the idea, but now I’m keeping an open mind, lest my wife starts cackling like a hyena all over again. No big deal, really. It only hurts a little. Kind of like birthing pains. Or breaking a few eggs to make an omelet. Or winning a Fear Factor contest. None of which would kill me, to say the least

WEEEEE!

One of the perks of being on “extended” vacation is being able to do something I’ve always wanted to do – drive around town early in the morning just to enjoy the morning sun and closely pay attention to and observe the things that you normally pass by obliviously in the blur of your everyday trek to work. It’s quite enlightening, really.

– McDo at Quezon Avenue, at the same intersection where you could find National Bookstore, Jollibee and Mercury Drug (I could never remember the street name) is jam-packed during breakfast. Yes, much more than McDo El Pueblo. Which is a little surprising since the locale isn’t exactly the bustling commercial spot-type that Ortigas Center is.

– You could really only enjoy an eat-all-you-can breakfast buffet when you don’t have anything else to do for the rest of the day. This is so true at least for me because I tend to get my money’s worth on buffets (is why I try to limit my binges to a max of twice every six months). This case particularly I’m talking about the breakfast buffet at Grills & Sizzles at the corner of Times and Examiner. Which is good, but not as good as that breakfast buffet served by Something Fishy over at Eastwood City (you get to try a lot of breakfast treats when your work routinely takes you to the wee hours of the morning, like mine did).

– You know what fitness gurus say about warming up first before going back to your workout regimen if you’re coming back from a long lull (in my case, two months). It is true – don’t ever see it as nothing more than popular fitness blabber for selling Men’s Health magazines – if you don’t, it WILL hurt in the morning, and in the following two mornings at the least. Well, that’s exactly what I had in mind when, before hitting the boxing gym again I decided to loosen up first on my Orbitrek cross-trainer. Lesson learned: just because it’s a home exercise equipment doesn’t mean it’s light enough for loosening up after an extended sedentary hiatus. Hell no. My legs hurt like hell the next day, and my ribs were strained to near-fracture point. Next time (though I hope there won’t be a next time), I’ll settle for the simpler push-up.

– Even after all these years, there are still a good number of pasaway drivers who think they could get away with ignoring the number-coding rule (trivia: the Philippine road rule on number-coding was once listed in some website as among the stupidest government laws enacted).

– It pays to be a morning person, I discovered. I think I’ll start calling it in much earlier so I could enjoy more eventful mornings like these before I eventually go back to work (which I suspect is approaching real fast).

Good morning, everyone

I discovered this morning that sometimes you do know when you’re talking in your sleep. It was probably because I was already half-awake that I remembered this dream I had. About my ex, Grace, and how we bumped into each other at an East Bay town situated about an hour away from San Francisco. We become sort of friends again. Then one day I was looking for her at her house and couldn’t find her. When I ran into her later that day she said she went to drive a “friend” of hers (a Chinese-Fil-Am who had been flirting with her) to the airport, and then saw a movie. Knowing her, alarm signals immediately went off in my head, which was confirmed when I saw that Chinese-Fil-Am guy still later that day – turns out they never went to the airport. She said she saw a movie alone to account for the hours she was gone. I said “I don’t buy it” after which she gave me a treatment of her patented guilty silence.

Here’s where I knew I was talking in my sleep, when I told her “Eto ka na naman. After all these years hindi pa rin natatapos ‘yang kalokohan mo. Bahala ka na nga. Buhay mo naman saka pamilya mo ang sinisira mo. Siguro kaya hindi tayo nagkatuluyan para hindi ako ang mamroblema sa ‘yo.”

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Disclaimer: the above were all just a dream. Grace and I didn’t end up with each other because she two-timed me. Three times (yeah, making me one of the dumbest guys on the planet, I know). But I haven’t heard from her in two years so I really don’t know where she is or what she’s been doing with her life. No idea whatsoever.

The point is this: it’s been years and I still sporadically find myself thinking or having dreams about her, particularly about her unfaithfulness. The issue of a girl’s infidelity delivers a particularly staggering impact because of the hard times I’ve had to go through brought about by her repeated two-timing (I suspect at least 4 guys she had slept with in the 6 years we were together – one of the 4 is confirmed. That was how dumb I was then).

So, does this mean I still love her? Or I still have feelings for her of some sort? Or I’m still hurting?

Nope. If any of the above were true, I wouldn’t be able to speak openly about this in a medium where my wife could see. I wouldn’t be able to speak openly about this to her at all. But I could, and I do. So no, no leftover feelings, no leftover hurt.

But “it left a scar”, so said Sara Milas, Eva Mendes‘ character in the movie Hitch.

Yeah. Sometimes the wound cuts so deep that although you’ve already healed, it still leaves a scar. The painful experience becomes something that you will always remember for the rest of your life.

Is it a bad thing? No, not necessarily. Scars of past “war wounds” only become a bad thing when we misinterpret in entirely. Case in point: a friend of mine, when speaking about his ex, always wonders if maybe he still loves her. I wouldn’t know for sure, but all indications tell me that it’s a scar he’s mistaking for something else.

A scar is nothing more than a mark where a serious injury used to be. We should never play the romantic by seeing it as something else – as some sort of a link in the past that maybe we should never have left behind, and that maybe we should at least catch up with. Some hurts are so serious that you never forget. Remembering the boy and remembering the feelings are two different things (Joey Albert, wahahaha ), and we should learn to discern which is which in order for us to get on with our lives.

So it’s okay to remember, really. Just don’t misconstrue it as “having something left over”. You can breathe a sigh of relief now because it’s done. Kaput. Finished. You just have a scar. You’re fine. No problem.