Monday, November 18, 2013

As a young adult, I am a wide-eyed dreamer, hopeful, and idealistic. I've always believed that tomorrow will bring an upgrade to whatever I have or whatever I am going through today.

But one day, reality shook me like an earthquake. No, nothing will ever change. Not the lonely feeling you have everyday when you wake up or before you go to bed. Not the frustration of knowing you ought to be somewhere but now is nowhere.

That day is today.

I am unhappy. I've figured that a long time ago, but I kept convincing myself that tomorrow, it might change. But those tomorrows became todays then became yesterdays. It never changed.

Monday, October 28, 2013

She's the One


David: I told you the only reason this won't work is if you wouldn't try. But I saw you tried. But you can try harder and wait for me to grow up. Or I can try harder to wait for you to move on. Or we can try harder and be honest.
Cat: I wanna be honest, because I love you.

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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

May I just say
FUCK IT
I have a video to edit, a newsletter to redesign, marketing materials to produce, articles to write, and here I am completely lost in the internet. Fuck it.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Hi, Dave.


Back to Black (Almost)

One of the best feelings in the world is getting out of the hair salon satisfied. Very rarely in my lifetime have I experienced that and one of those glorious moments was last night.

Just like any other subject matter, it took me forever to decide on what hairstyle or hair color to get. I decided on getting a shoulder length haircut for a change. My favorite hairstylist disapprove, though. She said long hair suits me better.

We came to a compromise on the hair color. She said I should go for Ash Blonde, but based on experience, light colors really do not suit a tan like me. I prefer a darker shade. So she came up with a darker color but it reflects a light shade under the sun. I loved it a lot! Not so very "balat ng mais" like my hair before and not so very plain as black. I think I'm gonna keep this color for a while. :)


Yeah this picture has an awkward angle. But this one shows the new hair color the best. Haha. Today my brother challenged me if I could take a #selfie shot using a DSLR camera. My wrist still hurts as of this writing. DSLR cameras are too big and too heavy for a #selfie. And contrary to a standard #selfie shot, no auto-filter to redeem a badly taken shot.

Luckily, Nikon D5100 has a swivel LCD camera. Here's a picture of me via webcamtoy.com taking a picture of me:


And here's the best photo I got from the #selfies:


Yeah. It's not for me. Hahaha.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

On The Job


I don't wanna spoil it for ya'll, but OTJ is a must-watch!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Facing my fears

"Conquer your fears," my officemate teasing me during our team's after-office meeting for an upcoming event. This same girl described me as "too quiet," the reason why guys do not approach me. In my defense though, I think whoever that person who would un-quiet me, would be the person I'm meant to be with.

Or maybe I'm meant to be forever alone.

Anyways, this blog post isn't about  me pondering on the "Isolation VS. Intimacy" stage from Erikson's theory. This is about how I dislike social interactions. If I could just talk with one person my whole life, I probably would. But no, I share the world with millions of people. It's not that I don't like people, it's just that if I know I don't have to talk to them and fake my interest in whatever topic they want to converse in, I won't. This, I believe, is how my relationship with people fall apart.

Today, I read a very interesting article on the internet. I arrived at work feeling depressed again. But mind you, this is the first this week. I am unusually creative the past few days that today, I feel so drained of ideas. That's why I decided to Google "How to visualize ideas". And I landed on an article about a guy who was paid by a website to totally drift away from the internet for one year. Interestingly, at the end of the article, he realized that the internet doesn't ruin relationships. It's people who let relationships get broken.

Going back to what this post is about, I decided to face my fears. Usually, I would back out of the task of talking with the media during events. My concerned superior asked me, "Are you sure you want this task?" I am not sure if I want it, but the heck, I'll do it anyways!

I wish myself luck. I'm gonna need a lot. Hopefully, this will be a start of the enhancement of my PR skills. Hopefully.



It's because you never really stop loving someone. 
It's either you always will,
or you never have in the first place.

Thursdays throwbacks make me feel... ugh. 
I hate myself. /wrist

Monday, September 2, 2013

If I love you and you love me, we will prevail – but if we don’t, we won’t. Love shouldn’t feel like we won’t.

-Christopher Hudspeth

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Everyone has their own Robin


Grateful

I have never felt knee-shaking scared my whole life until last night. My family and I was supposedly going downtown to have dinner; my parents and brother to go grocery-shopping and I to meet some friends. Pero, I don't know how it happened, bigla nalang kaming tinamad to go out. My mom was locking the door when she suddenly saw a huge fire in our backyard.

She called on my dad who was locking our gates. My dad saw the fire, too, he called on the neighbors for help. The neighbors thought he was drunk so it took a while before the neighbors came out to see what's really going on. Some brave men went inside our house, grabbed some pails, and tried to kill the fire. Unfortunately, the fire was already too big for that.



I was shaking when I first saw the fire. I didn't know that it was that overwhelming. My mom was already too frantic. Some of our neighbors even added to her panic, "Get what you could save!" "Where are your children?" "That house will explode anytime soon!" She appeared like she would lose it anytime soon.

Thank God, my brother and I took after my dad's level-headedness. Some people took it as passiveness, but we're just really the calm in the storm. That time, I was ready to lose everything. I even got out of the house barefooted.


But my family is really blessed. That didn't happen. After about 20 minutes, the firemen came to the rescue. Except for the wall in the corner of our fences, everything is in good shape. And oh, the faucet in our garage was intentionally broken for water to flow easily.



The abandoned houses beside ours was burned down before rescue came. I am just also thankful that despite losing the houses, none in the neighborhood was hurt. Also, my family is safe and alive. I do not want to think of the worst that could happen, had we not seen the fire earlier. I believe someone out there is really looking after our safety. I feel a little bit shaken and startled after what happened, but my heart is really grateful.

This guy is probably worth it.


This guy took his girlfriend to her first ever roller coaster ride. She's 23.

Friday, August 30, 2013

Thursday, August 29, 2013


I cried in public today. So shameful, I could die in a rabbit hole anytime now. Someone just told me I worked slow and I have messy hair, I already cried out of the room. Sad face.

That moment, I just realized how much of an emotional wreck I am. And so, I just made a list in my head of things I need to do to get back on my feet again and be happy. I'll call it MISSION MAKE CYRENE HAPPY AGAIN. That's not a very nice code for a mission. Anyways. The following are the things I would be doing in order to find happiness again:

1. Eat Japanese
2. Drink coffee with a close friend
3. Watch a funny movie
4. Get a new haircut/hair color
5. Sleep for ten hours
6. Go to the beach
7. Sing in the karaoke

Ok. Mission Make Cyrene Happy Again is on. :D

Monday, August 26, 2013

You won't convince me that I'll be happier.


Endurance

One of my favorite things to do is commuting from home to work and vice-versa. Come to think of it, I have been doing this for the past ten years of my life. Basically, I had no choice but to love it.

It is there in the daily jeepney rides where I meet people from all walks of life. This, for me, had always been interesting. Last Saturday, on my way to a relief operations, I had the strangest of all jeepney rides. Strange in a good way, I think. There was this guy, with a big body build, curly hair, and oily face in his late 30's or early 40's talking non-stop like he knew every passenger on board. I swear, if you made eye contact with him for at least half-a-second, he would automatically strike up a conversation.

And as much as I wanted to be a mere observer of this scenario, I was dragged in into a conversation. Naturally, he would notice me observing him as I was seated across him. He started talking about his adventures in Mt. Makiling, that he became a mountain adventurer ever since he and his wife separated. He started giving me some advice on marriage, "Never marry anyone who just love you in words. Love is action, not just purely emotions." I just smiled and nodded. God is speaking through him.

That day, I dropped by the office to make a prototype of a media briefer for one of our events. I find joy in making these prototypes. To me, they're like diamonds in the rough. Like they're so close to reality yet there's so much work to do. I feel more attached to drafts I make myself than those perfectly printed final outputs. Ehem. Anyways, since my printer ran out of ink, I had to rush to the nearby printing shop. There, written in a big tarpaulin is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. I had to blur out the seemingly bored-of-her-life-that-she-hates-the-whole-world tagabantay ng computer shop girl to understand what the Bible verse truly means.

"Love endures all things"--this part got me. If it does not endure, it is not love. Therefore, no matter how difficult the situation is, no matter how many obstacles we face, no matter how many people says otherwise, if we choose to love we must endure.


Friday, August 23, 2013

Transparency

I seriously thought I was dead. There was I, placing my thumb on the biometrics machine at 7:00 PM 12 times in a row but it kept on saying "Please try again." Damn it, it felt like it was mocking me. I don't wanna try again, I want it to recognize me as a real person.

This morning, I called in sick at work faking a migraine. I wasn't actually sick. I just felt comforted being in a complete void that was sleep. Unfortunately, after texting my boss at 6:30 AM that I couldn't make it today, my eyes wouldn't close shut. Thoughts kept rushing through my head, thoughts I don't wanna think about, thoughts I'd rather forget.

So, this is what heartbreak is.

I remember one time having an idle time at Carabao Park. One of my friends sat down and asked me a question on how I deal with loneliness. This was for his radio show. I told him I do not like bothering people of my sadness, so I rather write about it than talk about it. That time, I have never really known how real pain felt like.

I went to Twitter to find humorous posts of @ShutangInaBeks. She tweets about practical tips of moving on. She makes the reality of pain funnier that usual. Unfortunately, she did not post anything as of this morning. The advice I was looking for was not there yet. So, I just gave myself my own advice. I feel bad with my problems, but definitely Janet Lim-Napoles had it worse than I do. Now, I feel better.

Although that could change. This is me, the past few days of my life:


Friday, June 28, 2013

How to pack light

I am no light packer. My aunts and cousins always tease me about bringing too much stuff I don't need. Even on Sundays, when we go to church, my relatives would be so amazed on how many times I change clothes in a day. My bag is my mini-closet. You could just imagine how hard it is for me to pack things when traveling.

But, for my trip tomorrow, I availed the cheapest of all flights. Could you imagine going to Cebu for only PhP 400? Yes, via Tiger Airways. However, the thing is, there is no check-in luggage. I'm only allowed to carry 10 kilograms of my stuff. I accepted the challenge.

Initially, these are the things I wanna bring:


Yep, if i could bring everything, I would bring everything. But the trick here is to bring only what you need. What I do is I schedule clothes for each day and bring two to three extra pair of clothes. Plus, never forget to bring a party dress. You'll never know when a party comes knocking on your hotel room.

Speaking of hotel rooms, if you are staying in one, you need not bring towels. Towels are huge space fillers. If you're the sensitive kind of person, instead of bringing a towel, you could just buy a thin and light string-dyed malong. Because they are thin fabrics, they're very easy to dry and to bring.

If you're also traveling with only carry-on luggage, never bring any liquid toiletries. In the Philippines, sachets are everywhere. If you're not in the Philippines, there will always be a 7-11 store. If not in the Philippines and there's no 7-11 store, the hotel will give you these for free. Just don't expect the shampoo to be foamy.

And this is perhaps the greatest strategy to packing clothes: the art of rolling.



Trust me, folding your clothes this way is a big, big, space saver. I was able to fit in more clothes than I imagined. And this bag would probably weigh 5 kilograms or less. I still have space for pasalubong! Yay!

Also, never forget to bring an extra plastic bag. Or if you live in the Los Banos area, a cloth bag would do. What for? To separate your dirty clothes from clean ones.

So there, my quick tips to traveling light. This is step one of my ultimate dream of traveling with a cute summer dress, just a small sling bag, a straw hat, and lots of moolah. :)