A strand of white hair discreetly out of sight. Hairline barely moved an inch since puberty. Pockmarks sporadically documenting a childhood disease, a lost love and a lifetime gained, a marriage and two sons after, all smoothed out by off-the-shelf self-prescription topicals.

While a friend-contemporary is out on leave to decide if the floor tiles are to be grey or white and ask if the contractor will arrive today, I was poring over trade books and modifying my mood board to see what can make our rented house an oasis of calm. Contemplating on those three-foot lamps and a wooden baul, yes I can afford them. But how can I carry them when I don't have a car and the agent doesn't deliver in my area?

Houses and cars. Adult things-to-do. I think I am the youngest 28-year old in the world.

Barbra Streisand's character in "Meet the Fockers" says getting your girlfriend pregnant before you get married is a sign of a man's sexual prowess. Ok, done that. After the baby is born, time for some serious business and it was fortunate enough that we were both financially established. On to some serious stuff, we decided we cannot live on both sides and might as well make it on our own.

28 years. I should have been past the quarter-life crisis technically, and my legacy are two young men who will carry my name to fame--showbiz, politics or otherwise. Other than that, something to own, something with four walls or four wheels are not yet in place. While others of my age (or even younger) have become citizens of the world or bought a franchise of Waffle Time, I am stuck in a provincial economic zone, barking marching orders to the rank and file, receive my salary bi-monthly, pay the bills, buy groceries and cook chicken.

My means of increasing in value is every year during salary adjustments and if business is bad, by jumping ship to a high-paying job. My timelines are three years apart, give or take, unlike the five-year or ten-year plan that most of you may have answered to in an interview. Like the Chinese, I yearn to make it on my own in a sea of others-who-have-made-it, before I turn thirty. At the back of my mind while hating the idea that I am at the mercy of the bell curve of performance appraisals, I want to be in control. Childish innocence may be fun, at times cute but when push comes to shove, I want to be in control.

I willed that I look young for my age, and that's what others see, and I think this is the manifestation that everything around me is at a standstill.

Or maybe, that tin of Nivea really works.

According to Bushido, the Indonesian national anthem sounds like Sheryl Cruz' "Mr. Dreamboy" of yore.

Bhutan's, meanwhile, stands out as the only national anthem to include choreography. Somebody from That's Entertainment (Thursday Edition) is claiming credit.

And if the Montevideo Convention is to be followed, Sealand will be the smallest country on earth with a population of one as of 2002.

And I still have 9 Gmail invites to throw.

PS. Pray tell, Sheryn Regis is not the original who came out of the rain. It's Wendy Moten.

Warning: R18 entry because of the word "fuck".

Going out of the bank alone towards a deserted road inside this industrial park, a man probably in his late 40's was approaching, one hand holding a plastic bag and the other right on his crotch while looking straightly at me. Only when he was about two to three feet away did I notice his hand stroking a hard-on, horizontally at that like a limpid eel. Past him, I felt his head turn around while I walked on like I never saw such a thing.

Shock. Like when my crotch was grabbed inside a Greenbelt cinema, but what the hey. It's not a thing of beauty. I felt pity for the man--is this what makes him feel happy amid the risque, like being sucked in an office stairwell at 3AM? Does he have a family to love him, a wife to fuck 24/7, a webcam to jack off in the afternoon for late viewers in New York?

Penis is power and he thought that he could lure me like fish to a worm (a worm! ha! ha!). And after that, what? Body found in creek, limbs bound and mouth gagged. Lacerations in the anus. It is bondage, morbid but never kinky. He wants power. Ordinary, smalltown being that he is.

And it rests on his right hand that nobody will ever take, like the abandoned shortcut road that one will only tread out of desperation.

...

10 more Gmail invites to give.

I don't find myself bouncing home whistling buttonhole tunes to make me cry.
--Annie Lennox, "No More 'I Love You's""

...

I have 12 Gmail invites to scatter. Leave your addresses in the comments section provided.

Like casual sex, no commitments. No demands. You don't even have to tell your name. It's all yours.

I'm planning to beg forgiveness. While I turned down Subic because I felt it too obscene to party while our ancestral house was submerged, I had the gall to be hedonistic at the time when water swept most of the Indian rim.

Everything was free courtesy of beloved benefactors and I've graduated from social smoking and took it to the next level. A potent mix of peer pressure and the solidarity to bitch at unknowing passersby. Just a stick in the morning for my zeitgeber. Still not having vodka for breakfast, though.

One wedding...

Fernwood is the it place to tie the knot these days. Reception looks like a big greenhouse with faux falls and...swans in the heart of Tandang Sora? Vines in the ceiling, I thought there was fresh basil on my pasta plate. Monkeys are optional, that is, depending on your choice of best man.

Mental note to self: I want "A Whiter Shade of Pale" to be sung on my church wedding, post-procession or during the dance. If we can import Annie Lennox much better. Not that it was sung there. I want to be original.

the beach...

Never knew Puerto Galera is very accessible from Cubao. Five hours and we're into Luzon's temple of hedonism. And surprisingly cheap. Food is a hit-and-miss thing. The kebabs were good in one hole-in-the-wall (it starts with a "B") but the breakfast was terrible in one fronting the sea (White Beach something restaurant).

I lovehated the 100-peso massage on the beach. They're decent and they're good except for their abrasive palms (a mixture of sand, oil and libag from the previous client). I opted for coconut oil (the other was sampaguita oil--funereal, err, girly) and felt transformed into a giant kalamay. I knew I became one when somebody looking for desert poked me with a fork when we were drunk (could lick me instead).

...and a funeral.

A former supervisor died. I was on his government project as a temp during my in-between days as a fresh resignee and comeback student four years back. He fell unconscious during a meeting when a nerve snapped. Until now I was thinking, how could it be, eh masamang damo sya?

I never had a full workweek in his office cum nicotine chamber. Cigs, alcohol and chess. Add nasty colleague rumors of an affair, a lovechild and a dash of death wishes. Mix well.

Will visit him tomorrow.

I need to pay my respects, but can somebody tell me where I can buy them first?

N.B. Will post pictures if possible. No, not the funeral.

If we are to follow the lunar calendar, I am not yet through spanking the monkey and so are you.

With superstitions thrown out the window with worries that my last paycheck sank me 2,500 pesos deeper in debt, technically I won't be a guaranteed deadbeat for the coming year. Oh nonsense. Pero grabe the year that was, to borrow Startalk.

While doing my annual post-mortem I chanced upon the prosperity candles we lit last year, which must've come true depending on one's perspective. More green (wealth) and less blue (peace) in the House of 2004. Too bad we weren't able to source candles for this year, leaving me in anticipation what the year of the wooden cock would bring. Raging hard-(to prolong the pun) earned money perhaps.



Factoids I learned on New Year's Eve:

1. Some perv googled "naked picture of carlo maceda" and this blog popped. The mechanism was explained by my 90's post:
a) naked, courtesy of Keng's link, The Naked Blogger;
b) The heart of this entry could go on but you get the picture.;
c) Kris Aquino was erstwhile massacre queen...while Carlo and Donna raked in the profits...;
d) ...ST gave way to TF faster than Anna Maceda changed her name to Rosanna Roces.

"Concatenation for Pervy Googlers" will be on your shelves this year. Promise.

2. Vangelis' Chariots of Fire sounds like the Hawaii Five-o track where the orchestra must've dreamily smoking weed and gudang garam. It's my current ring tone and I'm tempted to don a grass skirt and do a tai chi routine.

3. Seedless grapes frozen for days and plunked in unchilled white wine is much better than chilling the wine in your ref. Impale the grapes in toothpick and imitate Naomi Campbell's mahtini-eez-a-pahty. Ang coňo!

4. People who talk more think less. Quote me on that.