Past Life

Funny how I begged out of a Hong Kong weekend with Joni and Maemae (and added another planet ticket to my growing list of wasted plane tickets) because I was feverish at the start of the week, and I didn’t want to run the risk of being exposed to AH1N1 when all along, I’ve been exposed to it already. Me, and my family, and some of my closest friends.

I knoooooow.

Dude. I know.

I know what you’re thinking, because I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

I could be carrying the virus too.

Ohmyalskdfja;lkdsjfalkdsfja;lkd.

(The DOH has been very particular about not disclosing the names of these patients, so for the sake of anonymity, let’s just call my friend “J”. I don’t mind being called “R” when it’s my turn to be in your story, k? K! LOL.)

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I honestly, completely, with-all-my-heart believe that it’s not yet the last.

It can’t be the last! It just can’t be.

I mean, come on, it’s good business! I think the Heads profited in two concerts (not to mention all the DVDs and records sold in between the two big events) everything they could’ve earned the past ten years that the band was off the music business. Pupil or Sandwich or The Dawn or Markus Highway could never fill up the MOA grounds and pull off what the Eraserheads did that night. Nope.

More importantly, everyone loved them! A decade, countless of controversies and bad publicities, several new bands, a bunch of music albums, and a couple of heart attacks later, everyone still loves the Eraserheads.

I was *accidentally* there last Saturday and I witnessed it myself, thanks to Marian who, just a few hours before the concert, textblast-ed that she had extra tickets. Hooray for impulsive decisions! I didn’t have to think it over, I just reserved the tickets right away.

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Remember when I said that the apartment I moved in to less than two months ago was, like, the worst thing that ever happened to my history of apartment-hopping? Well, I just left that apartment and found myself a new (more expensive BUT much much better) place.

5 different apartments in 2 years, take that!

Actually, I was still (kindof) enjoying going home to Caloocan and sharing my Mom’s bed with her (I had to do this for a week). I didn’t realize, though, how unbelievably messy I could be until one late morning in Caloocan, when I woke up in the middle of this *points to picture*, and found my Mom sleeping near the edge of her bed. I knew right then that I had no time to lose — I needed to spare my Mom from this mess.

Moving to the new place was no different, at least for the first night. I slept in the middle of a room full of moving boxes, but in spite of the mess, the place felt like home. :)

Even more now that everything’s right where it should be.

So yay, I found my home-away-from-home, and this time, I’m confident it will be for good. (What with that one year contract, and the expensive rent, I’ll sure make the most out of this, heh!) :)

Man I’m getting old.

I really should start collecting canceled plane tickets. I’ve managed to accumulate a few in a span of a month, and while it has brought me frustrations along the way, I now laugh at my apparent bad luck (for lack of better term) in flying.

If I may trace my flying misadventures, it all began in Legazpi where I spent a few days with USAP‘s marketing mancomm last month. By the way, I almost forgot how much I enjoyed flying. I mean, seriously, while Mikey looked like he was gona puke the entire 30-minute trip, my only concern was how to get his face off the view so I can get a glimpse of the clouds (the bastard got the window seat, loser). Anyway. Point is, I enjoyed flying, in spite them saying how turbulent the flight was. And I’m really looking forward to the next opportunity I could get to fly.

Okay, wait, pictures first.

Marc, Francis, Rico, Ely, Mikey, Alvin and Mel

..and me, of course.

Sooo TGIS, I know right.

Anyway. Here’s where all the “bad luck” started flooding in.

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With my new apartment now officially the worst thing that’s ever happened to the history of apartment-hopping (no Globe Visibility signal in my room, landlord’s PLDT connection gone blpht, cable connections not compatible with the TV, not to mention the leak that drown our stuff on the first day but don’t let me rant about that one), I nominate last week as the newest candidate to my worst weeks ever.

But that is, until yesterday, when THIS was delivered to me. Waah. :)

Yup, that’s right. There’s my ticket to one whole week of Hillsong bliss at the Acer Arena, happening on July 7-11 of this year.

But of course, I’m still not even halfway through making it. It’s just that teh boyfriend and I registered for the early-bird promo around November last year, so I’ve been getting all these mails since the start of the year — (1) confirmation letter of my registration and full-payment, (2) support document for my visa application, and (3) just yesterday, the ticket to the Hillsong Nights which comes free to those who registered.

Just the sight of my ticket, and my very own seat (well, at least the seat number), has kept me elated until now. So.. up next, Australian visa application. I just hope my fingerprints starts to cooperate already. Uggh, the fingerprints? That’s another story.

Come to think of it, whatever happens within the next 60 days — I know for sure that in the long run, I can smile and be happy with the fact that I got this far. :)

I’ve looked everywhere — Odyssey outlets, music bars, department stores, etc — for any of Kendall Payne‘s albums, to my own dismay. I even got some of my friends involved in the search, but unsuccessful we all were.

So imagine my delight when a package was delivered to my apartment last week, all the way from Staten Island. Yep, all three of them. *jump, jump* (Thanks, boyfriend, you’re super!)

So yeah. Since then, my playlist includes three albums worth of Kendall Payne: Paper Skin, Grown, and Jordin’s Sister. Happiness does come in small packages, huh. :)

I didn’t know that Kendall Payne’s a Gospel singer. I first got interested when I heard her song “Scratch” from a Grey’s Anatomy episode, and “Not Afraid to be Me,” also from GA. I later learned that she’s also the voice behind Felicity and Never Been Kissed’s soundtracks. I loooove her. Although she can be very well known in the pop slash country-music arena, a few of her songs have an obvious Godward message in them. Like her song Aslan, which, I reckon, was inspired by CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, where Aslan (the lion) symbolizes the Savior and the power of good.

So anyway. Enough blabbers.

There goes one little wish granted for me. This year, a lot of dreams will come true. Let’s start with the little ones. :)

Well, not really. A lot of my things are still out, and I still don’t know how to jam them all in these moving boxes.

After almost two years of staying under the same roof, we’re parting from some of our (soon-to-be-former) housemates and leaving this place we once called “home”. But it’s all good. Change is good, after all. And it’s not like I won’t be seeing Normi and Jen anymore. I’d still be staying with Aster anyway, and Ivy, a friend from way-back-diaper-days, will be joining us too. Plus we found the perfect apartment also, after a whole month of trying to look for one. It’ll be fun. And I’m excited and nostalgic and uhm, sleepy (right). But it’s all good. :)

So hey, I’m in the middle of a pile of clothes and boxes and shoes and dirty laundry right now, taking a break from all the packing, and trying my best to capture the moment and how it feels.

(Note worthy: This post is not brought to you by Tortillos or Merell.)

Now is the time to feel stressed, and to think of a nice long bath, but there’s still a lot to do. However, on top of the adrenalin rush, I can sense this teeny weeny bit of nostalgia in the air — which I think is inevitable, especially if you’re leaving a place you’ve spent some of the best months of your life in, and you’d most likely never set foot in that place again.

I mean, how can I forget all those nights I entered that door to find sanctuary in the four corners of this room after a long day at work?

Or that bulletin board that once was a collage of bills, and photos, and notes, and star-shaped pushpins?

And how can I forget that view from my favorite spot in the veranda — the same view where I last saw my Dad’s smile, (and the same place where I last felt your arms around me)?

Hay. Priceless moments in this place. I shall always remember.

I would have taken more pictures, but my mess awaits. This nagging voice inside my head keeps on reminding me that I’m no longer a little girl, and there’s no more yaya to pack my things and do the tasks that are supposed to be mine. Gah. It’s tiring to be an adult.

Tomorrow, we’ll be leaving this apartment, and will start filling a new one with new memories.

And it’s really not that big of a deal for me to be blogging about it.

Except that it once again made me think about how time flies so fast, and that life involves a lot of moving on.

A few weeks ago, I posted about our paperclip project, asking you, my dear readers, what you think about paperclips. A week later, I blogged about where that paperclip project brought me.

I never really got around to disclosing how our little paperclip quest came to be. It was merely a dare: I blog, he writes a song. (And yep, we were fully aware that there’s something unfair about that dare, LOL.) Consequently, the helpless random object we thought about was, yup, you got it, a paperclip. The rest was history. Anyway, you can navigate over to that post again to listen to the song my friend, David, made ;)

On another note, look what I found.

I wasn’t really looking for it but spending time in Powerbooks last night unintentionally brought me to the children’s section, and lead me to this.

Yellow Paperclip with Bright Purple Spots by Nikki Dy-Liacco

I’ve read the paperclip story online already (thanks to Jun for pointing me to that direction), but I knew I just had to get myself a copy. For only 65 pesos, I got myself a keepsake. I love it! ♥

Simple joys, that’s what this is about, definitely. :)

Meanwhile, Lots of blogging to do. Up next this weekend, my date with them lovely ladies, and something about the latest gaming thing in the net today. ;)

Edit. Miss Nikki Dy-Liacco just gave us a heads up on her blog, which you can view here. Wee. We’re famous. LOL. :P She’s right, what’s more interesting here is the simple truth that worlds continue to collide. Yup. I couldn’t agree more.

It’s not as bad as it looks you know.

Last June 2, our church had a medical-dental mission at Mambugan, Antipolo. Just a backgrounder, I’ve always avoided assisting in the dental department because I couldn’t stand seeing all the gory action happening inside the (ugh) mouth, the bloodshed, and the tears. This last time, however, it was as if I was called to be there. They needed assistance, and I was there, and while no one really forced me to help out, I took the challenge of being the dentist’s assistant cum makeshift dental chair.

Now to defend myself from a church-full of witnesses, this picture does not (AT ALL) describe how I was the whole day. And Jasper, who arrived just a few hours short to assist with me, can attest to that (right dude?)

With our designated Dentist for the day (and my cousin in law, too), Dr. Jojo.

I can’t believe someone caught this moment in the act. (Good job, Tito Eg!)

Contrary to what this picture shows, I kindof enjoyed it, really. No, not the part where you get to witness anesthesia being injected into the gums, and teeth being extracted, and saliva and blood gushing all over the place. Mostly, I took joy in holding a scared kid’s hand while his mollars were being pulled out, or conversing with mothers about trivial things while they waited for the anesthesia to seep in, or assuring a little girl “na parang kagat lang ng langgam yan” when she’s on the verge of backing out.

There were times when I felt like shutting my eyes off because it’s like I could feel their pain, or times when I’d struggle for the right words of comfort to say. I can’t even remember how many times Jasper and I said “parang kagat lang ng langgam yan“, and then we’d look at each other and silently laugh, knowing that it’s really more painful than that. You know you just had to say it to give them a little push, or to let them know that there are far more painful experiences in the world than an extracted tooth.

“Masakit lang yan sa simula.”

“Sandali lang to, tas tapos na.”

“Anong mas gusto mo, araw-araw syang masakit, o tatanggalin na naten ngayon para tapos na yung sakit?”

It was therapeutic saying those things to kids, and hearing yourself as if you need it too. After some time you get used to the sight of blood, and to the shrieks of pain. After some time you get relieved for them because you know that they’d go back home armed with a pack of pain killers to last a whole week, and the pain would soon be gone. And then you watch them leave and you know that if only for that one moment that God allowed you to be there in their time of pain, the experience was definitely worth it all.

With Nanay Beth Miana, another one of SBC’s very own dedicated doctors.

See, I don’t look scared anymore, do I? c”,)

More pictures here and there.

You know how some people collect paper clips they find lying around? I seriously tried it. I walked around the mall, along Ortigas Center, and all the way back home just to get one (just one!!) paper clip sighting so I have something to say about my paper clip experience (or, now, the lack thereof).

And I kind of made it a point to go out of the office as I didn’t want to consider it a valid place to have an extraordinary paper clip encounter. You see, I have a box of paper clips on my drawer, some on my folders, a couple hanging by my cork board, and I’m sure there’s a pink one somewhere in Camille‘s jungle of a desk too — in short, one is more likely to see a paper clip lying around in an office than not. I wonder how Markku and Nikki just find paper clips lying around — along the side of the road, in a park bench, etc? It’s even more interesting how Nikki finds one all the time, anywhere she goes! (Gaah. Maybe if I stop trying, if I stop looking, I’ll find one. When that happens, I’ll let you guys know.)

Amazingly, albeit my failure to find a wandering paper clip, this experience has virtually brought me to places, and people, and ideas (and dreams) I never thought possible. One thing that surfaced in this paper clip project is that, what paper clips are for different people has gone beyond what they were originally made for and what their very name implies (you know, to clip papers together). Simply put, paper clips have become more than just, well, paper clips. There’s the manly habit of using paper clips as tooth pick, cotton buds, or something to pick your nose with (come on guys, couldn’t you be any more disgusting? LOL). There’s the rare fashion of using paper clips to adorn the hair. There’s the usual OC method of organizing files with color-coded paper clips.

And then there are those whose lives were changed because of one paper clip. There’s this guy who started with one red paper clip, which he traded until he ended with a house in Canada. And there’s this Filipina who wrote a story about a yellow paper clip with bright purple spots, which ended being published, and eventually became an award-winning children’s story book.

Paper clips mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And if we would spread our imagination, there’s more to paper clips than meets the eye.

Prior to this, I didn’t have any extraordinary paper clip experience. I don’t collect paper clips like Nikki or Markku. I don’t have a bad childhood memory that has to do with paper clips like Mikey or Ade. I don’t know how to make hearts out of them like Tina. I do remember that Maid in Manhattan movie and the little paper clip moment the little kid and the man had, but unlike Mae, I never once tried if it would work for me. And I definitely WON’T use paper clips for the purpose of personal hygiene, ok, TJ and Jake? (You have jobs! Buy cotton buds will you?!)

Perhaps I just didn’t have any reason to sensationalize what paper clips are for until now.

It’s true what they say.. there’s always something extraordinary about the ordinary, in the same way you find beauty in the most trivial of things. You ignore the fact that you share the world with billions of paper clips, until this one point in your life when it created for you a way to reconnect with an old friend. Which in turn became an excuse to connect with all sorts of people: People who use paper clips to take wax off their ears. People who have traumatic experiences with paper clips. People who collect paper clips, and use them to define moments.

Now, I have every reason to see paper clips in a different light. This could be it, my paper clip story preserved in a blog forever. It may not be as grand as Nikki’s, or Oneredpaperclip’s, but who knows, this could be, for me, the beginning of something else. I’m excited to find out.

Hey David, your turn. ;)

Here’s more link love to the rest of you who commented and shared their thoughts on paper clips: ♥Joni♥, Jun, Jayvee, Rob, Romz. Merci. ♥

Edit. A bit too late but here’s the challenge: I blog about it, he makes a song. (I know there’s something not fair about that, LOL.) For what it’s worth, he “won” the dare because I missed deadline, but really now, I’m confused. (Why did you win again? We both missed deadline, didn’t we?) Anyway. Here’s his song which you can also find here.

And think when trials come
Like heavy weights they press you down
At times it seems it never ends
Just bend along and change again
to gather all life’s sheets again
And remember there is strength in you inside
Like paperclips we hold life’s one big bind
One big bind.

[audio:https://past.chasingdreams.net/audio/Paperclips.mp3]
Paperclips by David Oyos © July 2007