I just finished the Matthew Pearl book - "The Dante Club". It was fantastic. I highly recommend it to those who don't mind carnage and morbidity but love the poetry of words. You've got Longfellow as a major character in a murder mystery - who could ask for more? Okay, notice how disparate this poor excuse of book review is coming to be...

Anyway, now I have nothing to bring to the beach. I NEED ANOTHER BOOK! Anyone recommend anything? I need to get to Powerbooks... I want... I want... I want...

*rock back and forth with rapid eye movements*

Just have to bear one more day.
Of stress.
Of ungratefulness.
Of pessimism.
Of caffeine-induced happiness.
Of waiting.
Waiting.
Longing.
For my feet to touch the sand.
Sigh.

Beach!!!!
La luz, here I come (again).

Talk. Talking. It's one of the most natural activities. Exchange of ideas, basic gossip, spreading of useless information, yada yada. It's the easiest and most cost effective way to entertain yourself. I come to notice though, that life has categorized "talk" and "talking" into two different things. By strict definition, they essentially mean the same thing, one being the root word of the other. But by experience, the two words differ in approach and in the response they elicit. Let me explain.

Talking has this air of voluntariness. It's easy and free. It gives you the impression that any topic would do, from knowledge about bi-polar chemical reactions to the mundane and trivial information no one needs to know but you talk about it anyway. It's the lighter side of the conversation spectrum.

On the other hand, there's "talk". Plain and simple, straightforward. Let's add more drama to it. Let's call it "the talk". You can do the I'm-quoting hand action from Austin Powers if you want. Well, that's what it is basically - it's drama in the making. It has this dense, anticipatory cloud of fear around it. Oooh, it's "the talk". If you're parents, you'd dread having to do "the talk" with your children (especially if they're male). If you're boss eyes you and says "let's talk", you'd wish that the flourescent lights could teleport you elsewhere. "We need to talk" conversation beginners just makes the air clump into a box of seriousness. It's almost like an order. You're trapped. You've got no choice. You've got yourself a one-on-one retreat. It's a palanca letter coming alive. Okay, it builds character. It makes you listen to others (which is a good thing often forgotten). It makes you realize that you're wrong and you hurt someone and that something needs to be done about it. But don't you just hate the feeling of being in "the talk". The "talk" itself, with its simple objective to resolve, is fine. It's the feeling. I particularly am not very comfortable with it. I'm the type who just chooses to plunge and move on. Note the negative (and try to not do it again) and think of other positives. Do we need to recount and reinforce wrongness? It just gives you so much weight. I admit that at times this could be a very close-minded way of taking things, and I'm not saying that I don't like "the talk-ing" because I know it's helpful - it's just a plain cringe moment. It's really the feeling. The i-can't-be-defensive feeling. The i'm in a "talk" feeling.

But, some people welcome "the talk". It's a source of comfort and closure. There's a discussion, the conclusion, the next steps (plus the sorries). Re-examine the negatives, then look forward to the positives. Maybe I'm not just one of those people. I try to be, but it's very hard. Plunge and move on, as Giles said. Like slaying. You can't move on with one hand grasping a stake still driven into a corpse.

Bikinis. They're evil. I'm helpless when I'm faced with a cute string number with whatever print. And man, if the pricetag only has a 3-digit number? Gad. Nothing can stop me. Oh, oh... and when the top makes me look like a actually have... ahem... a top. Now that's an offer that can't be refused. At the rate I'm going, there aren't enough beach trips scheduled for the all the bikinis in my drawer to see sunlight. I just bought a new set yesterday. Chips can't believe that I got another one. I can't even believe I got another one. And I wonder where my salary is going... hmmm.

I wonder though why the digits get higher as the swimsuit gets smaller. There's less cloth and less thread going around. But oh well, like we care. The boys seem to like it anyway, even if they do bicker about the spending.

We were beachifried! A wonderful weekend in La Luz. Four marketing girls and one banker (aka Chips) soaking up the sun, guzzling down the alcohol, and just washing all the stress away. We went snorkling, us girls having to put on life vests aka pumpkin suits because we panic once we're not able to touch the floor anymore. So many quirky things happened... but I'll just limit this post to the best anecdotes.

beaches give way to FHM moments...
Tin and I are tanning on the beach. I lift my head and survey the surroundings. Atop the big rock at the end of the beach stood a woman in a one-peice suit and tight board shorts (maybe they were even cycling shorts). FHM-posing away. As in profile shots, one leg perched on a higher rock than the other, with shoulder down (I can almost imagine that she was pouting). Her friend clicks away on a digital camera. She emotes away. Project-kiti-project in different cleavage inducing, stomach sucking poses. In between shots, she excitedly shouts "Isa pa! Isa pa!" (one more! one more!). Tin and I look at each other, shake our heads with a snicker, and go back to facing the sun.

Later on, a friend of this FHM-poser excitedly shows off her three-peice bikini (top, bottom plus a matching skirt). The guys in their group coax her into dancing "Sayaw naman dyan! Sayaw!" (Come on, dance! Dance!). She plays hard to get and giggles. More coaxing - "Siksbomb! Siksbomb!" (meant to be sexbomb). Are we hearing this. This is such a beautiful beach. How in the world did they get here. She finally throws her arms into the air and breaks into a hip-girating sway. No. Noooooo.

and also to omigod there are girls and I'm so cool moments...
This one will be about an all-boys group. Note the word "boys". Let me paint you a profile: they're probably high school, or seniors who just graduated from an exclusive-boys school. They probably just heard of the existence of gyms, or have not heard about it at all. They have gadgets such as I-pods. Some are wearing cotton shorts. They talk rather loudly and laugh boisterously, so everyone feels their presence. So us four girls were tanning in our bikinis... and we hear these coming from the big umbrella at our left:

"May baraha ka ba pare?" (Dude d'you have cards)
"Oo. Ano, laro tayo" (Yup. So, we play?)
"Kulang ata tayo sa tao" (Think we lack people)
There were about twenty of them, for perspective.
Loudly. "Sana maka-aya pa tayo" (Hope we could get more people)
Someone whispering loudly, nodding a head towards us. "Dun, dun o." (There, there)
Riiiiiight.

And then singing interrupts our tanning session. Usher (turned whinny). Bone Thungs and Harmony (Oh God). KC and Jojo (Oh for the love of God). How far back into coolness can we get. We glance to our left and two guys are sharing the I-pod. The one singing (na feel na feel pa nya) is not sharing the I-pod. What is wrong with him!?! Oh, oh! I know! He thinks he's cool.

now, the drunken and utterly lost moment...
We decide to start early with the alcohol. So after dinner, we set ourselves up in our cabana with glasses, a bucket of ice and some pillows. On the agenda: Mudslide and Tanduay Rum - which was so close to smelling like kerosene. We mix mango juice and the rum (Chips got tetra packs so it was a bit of a struggle getting the juice into the glass without scissors). Ah. GOOD. We pretend that the straws were stirrers. Yeaaaah. So three glasses of mango-rum and a couple of Mudslides later... we girls were beyond sanity. And yet we wanted to play cards. So Chips goes and gets the cards. Then...

Chips snuck up on me. "Boo!" And he throws in the deck of cards.
Me, in a drunken state, take a wee bit more than a second to react.
Scream. We all scream.
"Mam, baket." (Ma'am, why)
A voice quips from the other side of the cabana.
We girls stop screaming. One of the beach's staff pokes his head in.
Eyebrows are raised. What do you care looks are flashed.
Baket, ano pakialam mo? Masama bang mag-cards? Sumigaw?
Me: "Anong baket?" (Why what?)
"Baket po." (Why)
Ang kulit ha. Well, this guy doesn't give up does he.
Light bulb moment. Maybe he's just a concerned citizen, re the screams.
I point to Chips and whine. "Eh kasi sya eh!" (It's because of him!)
He pauses. "Mam, ice bucket po. Refill ko lang" (Ma'am, the ice bucket. Will refill).
Ahhhhh. We roll around in a fit of laughter.

We try to play pusoy dos while intoxicated. We couldn't tell the spades from the clovers. At one point, we couldn't tell if a person dropped singles or doubles. So we decide to check the time, feeling that it was around 3am already. It was only 10:30. We glance at the other cabanas. Left had people getting massages (poor them). The one to our right had people playing scrabble (they weren't drunk). Man, we were off to an early start. Lesson for the night: play the brain-required games BEFORE getting drunk.

MAN, I LOVE THE BEACH!

Another installment on the guy-thing series. I must say that ketchup would be a guy essential. Of course the males reading this post are free to prove me wrong (it's just a generalized observation). Almost all the guys I know loooooove ketchup, Chips being one of them. As in they will coat, rather drippingly, whatever they can with as much ketchup possible. I again observed this one morning as Chips and I were eating hotdogs for breakfast. And in my brain sparked a potentially very tough question...

Chips pours ketchup onto his plate.
He sloshes the hotdog into the puddle of red mush.
My tough question:
"Hun, what would you rather live without - ketchup or me?"
Munching on the sloshed hotdog.
No legitimate response. So I prod...
"As in you wouldn't have ketchup on your burger..."
More munching.
"... on your hotdogs..."
Munch, munch.
"... fries..."
Slosh, slosh.
"... as in noooo ketchup."
He slightly turns to me and says, "Hunny, just eat."

He didn't answer me. What does that say? WHAT DOES THAT SAY?!? Packer.

I wonder if fire escapes are intentionally designed to be narrow and have steps too short and steep for anyone to actually step on, while allegedly designed to save lives of those in a burning building. I wonder if the level of difficulty to escape through these fire escapes is invertly proportional to the nature of the building. For example, our fire escape is so narrow and steep that tripping over a step can send you head-first ito the wall right before you. Was it not foreseen that because the building was situated in the center of a business district, without them little rooms and studios but open floor layouts, that it would most likely be an office and therefore people (females in particular) inhabiting them would be in heels and probably skirts (short and pencil cut, for those in uniform). What about those offices that go beyond 20 or 30 floors? What do their fire escapes look like? I've seen some with mere unfolding steel stairs and I am thankful that though our office is old, at least the dangerous descent is made of concrete. But still quite unthankful for the abovementioned narrowness and steepness.

I wonder how many people could actually be saved by the fire escape. Is there a study that such fire escape design could actually even save lives? I went through a fire drill the other day and by the looks of the experience, we would've died. It took me, with careful and precise navigation on my gold stilletos, more than 30 minutes to get down from the 9th floor. Traffic within the concrete funnel was at a stand-still, with people from the lower floors squeezing themselves in step by measly step. We would all have been left deaf by the merciless ringing of the fire alarm then burnt to the bone (possibly by raging flames brought by people trying to squeeze into the concrete shaft) by the time we reached the 5th floor. Also, don't forget the actual danger of traversing the fire escape. If you wouldn't be found toasted dead or with third-degree burns in your cubicle, you'd be found paralyzed and trampled on (probably with heel marks) due to a severed neck, massive head trauma or just plain broken bones in the fire escape.

The fire drill also had this program where they taught you some basic first aid after the companies in the building have assembled. Bah. I considered myself dead on the scene. I slipped into back exit of the building beside ours, made my way to the main street through their lobby, and into a coffee shop. Ah, alive again.

I bought a book! I haven't bought myself a book in eons. For one thing, they've gotten mighty expensive. And well, recently I've just been riding on to other people's book budgets (aka borrowing).

We've actually developed quite a reading circle here in the P&G accounts room. It started with reminiscing about those Sweet Dreams pocketbooks... then how you move onto Nancy Drew... then you start increasing the page-threshold with romance novels by Judith McNaught - the (pre) teen girl's first encounter with you-know-what, outrageously and passionately detailed like a cookbook. Recounting the titles and authors, we decided to re-circulate those books for fun.

It seems to me, that for us in the reading circle (and maybe for you), Judith McNaught and the likes of her was the default first step to novel reading. It's one thing you'd giggle over with your friends (or maybe not) or hide from your parents and especially the nuns at school. Because just the cover is enough to send you to the administrator's office. The infamous "Knight in Shining Armor" by Jude Deveraux was actually my first book that went beyond the 150-page mark. My older cousin lent it to me, and ignoring that passionate artwork, it seemed like a logical step-up since by 5th grade I had already read the entire Nancy Drew hardbound series and was halfway through the Case Files (plust the usual Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley). And then you read all these romance novels, cry your heart out, and wish for your own prince charming (plus or minus the ravaging lovemaking). And then there comes a time when you just outgrow it. By some reason, you just do. And you only revisit such readings in close confidence with trusted friends or co-workers (or with no one at all).

Next in line, Anne Rice, Oscar Wilde, John Grisham... the Shopaholic series... Dan Brown (still to be borrowed). I fell in love with Anne Rice and her Mayfair Witches. Didn't really buy into the whole chick themes, it probably wasn't just my thing, even if it was about shopping. And oddly, didn't go into the Harry Potter phenomenon, even if it was about sorcery. I've had my share of seemingly good novels which turned out bad. Like "Killing me Softly" which was translated into a movie allegedly as dragging as my reading experience of the book. Okay. I've yammered. And the basic announcement was, that I bought a book. I'm proud of myself. Because really, I've missed reading. I miss the smell of the turning pages as they flutter near my nose. Anyway, the book is - The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. A murder mystery combining fiction and fact, surrounding the first english translation of Dante's Inferno. Ah, just my type.

So there. I shall read. And you guys, revisit the romance novels. It will cause you much joy. Try making your boyfriend read it. He will think it's worse than porn and give you a weird look for even being exposed to such wordings (i.e. proud evidence of his desire) at such a tender age.