Candy, Sherwin, and I are loyal patrons of Café Antonio but we just had to try out the newly opened Boston Café branch which stands on the erstwhile site of Leandro’s Bar. Interestingly, the first thing I noticed upon setting foot on the café wasn’t the smell of the coffee, the people, nor the furniture — I first noticed the tiles. The inside of the cafe had two types of floor tiles and I’m pretty sure they were Mariwasa’s Hacienda Ochre and Hacienda Red. Candy calls me an addict already because all I’ve done the past month is examine tiles every place we go, more often than not I would try to identify their maker and style. And that’s pretty valid, I guess, because over the past weeks my weekends were spent in various home depots where my mum, dad, and I have been shopping for tiles and home fixtures. That’s right, we’re building our house!

Architect’s sketch

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Posted on Sunday, November 16, 2008 @ 6:26 am under Home, Indulgence
Comments: 8

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Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 @ 10:54 pm under Geek
Comments: Nada

This is kindof a struggle because I am both a teacher and a student. So let’s pretend awhile that my roles are mutually exclusive. As a teacher, my thinking is, a grade is just a number and not a pure — even good — indicator of a student’s intellect, capability, skill, creativity, and propensity for success. I want a student to deserve a given grade even though it doesn’t happen all the time, one reason or the other. Which is all right because, like I said, a grade, though an indicator, is not THE indicator.

The student in me disagrees though. I live for the grade, always have and probably always will. That 1.0 on my class card is my drive to attend class and submit perfect outputs. Because, let’s be honest, that’s pretty much all that I can do.

If you know me quite well, you’d know I’m not a naturally interested person. And this lack of curiosity makes me crave for the grade more, much more, than the idea of actually learning. In one of my previous classes I said my reason for joining the class was more of a theoretical, less of a practical, one. But this mindset wasn’t going to stop me from delivering superstandard student performance. I would give up sleep, health, breakfast, lunch, and dinner just to be able to turn in a near-perfect submission. And this week I have given up plenty because the grade is that worth it.

The grade is that worth it because I need a pristine record with only 1s and 0s visible on the transcript. See this pristine record is my passport to prosperity, my claim to fame. What good is an education if the grades aren’t straight As?

Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 @ 11:31 pm under Geek
Comments: 2

I thought David Sedaris was funny until I started reading Augusten Burroughs (which isn’t his real name by the way). Augusten is sick, twisted, and painfully hilarious. At times I would find myself putting down the book momentarily just to process the absurdity of a certain event/thought he had written about. But, like Sedaris, he also has a way of putting the most poignant feelings so eloquently:

I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention.

For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks — accidentally — and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive.

Posted on Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 10:25 am under Random
Comments: 3

I had planned to lie to the doctor. I finally came to my senses to go to the clinic for a check-up today. The asthma hasn’t subsided yet and it’s been two weeks! My worry was, I knew Dr. CC was on duty Tuesdays and Thursdays so I agonized yesterday and this morning what I was going to tell her about my condition. I call her Dr. CC because she goes on and on about Climate Change. Well who doesn’t but with her comes an accompanying matter-of-fact sensibility that it seems like climate change is the unifying thread that connects everything in the universe. Last summer, during our consultation, climate change was the root cause of my miseries in life. Climate change was related to my asthma, my work, even my poor sleeping habits. Dr. CC also took the liberty to reprimand me for my irregular sleeping hours. And then she prescribed me medication that was a quarter of my monthly pay. So no, I wasn’t excited at the prospect of seeing Dr. CC again today and I had planned to lie to her in case she asked me about my sleeping habits this time round.

After I’d been “prepped” by the nurse on duty, he took my file to the attendant manning the two consultation rooms: one room was occupied by Dr. CC, the other by an unfamiliar name — probably a new doctor. In the waiting room Sherwin took pleasure in scaring me that the attendant was going to bring my file to Dr. CC’s room and that a lie detector test awaited me inside (which would be worse than her climate change romanticizing). Fortunately, the attendant ushered me to the other room.

She was a new doctor, very kind and gentle unlike rigid and experienced Dr. CC. Dr. New checked my breathing and visually examined my orals and nostrils (nostrils!) with her handy penlight. On a side note, I read in a magazine that doctors’ tools harbor plentyyy of bacteria and that there’s nothing wrong asking the doctor to disinfect let’s say the stethoscope first before making contact with your skin. So after Dr. New had “diagnosed” me, she referred to my file’s previous consultation notes courtesy of Dr. CC (which surprisingly didn’t mention anything about climate change) and copied the medication she had prescribed me in May. Our consultation was over in less than three minutes.

I’d initially considered self-medicating just to avoid the trip to the doctor but had I known that I was going to be prescribed the same expensive antibiotics, I would’ve purchased the meds on my own sans the consultation. After all this fuss about going to the doctors, I told Sherwin that while Dr. New was nice, I knew Dr. CC would’ve given me a more thorough diagnosis.

Posted on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 @ 11:38 pm under People
Comments: 1