November 10, 2010

Internet Cafe-ing

My Wednesday-afternoon-at-the-internet-cafe ritual started innocently enough.  Between chatting up a storm with parents-turned-yayas and spending quiet me-time at the museum, I took the road frequently traveled by Counter Strikers and took up a corner at the internet cafe.  Considering my addictions (coffee, Farmville and eavesdropping), I was naturally hooked: life does have a way of happening at the internet cafe.

Today, my wandering ears zeroed in on this girl who was giving her (I presume) husband a running and tiresome documentary of their financial whatnots.  The husband couldn't probably get a word in, because for the better part of an hour, it was just her talking about budgets and expenses and the high cost of living.  And how his remittance would be most welcome. blah blah blah.

A group of college kids came in and drowned out the girl's protracted soliloquy.  They're talking Counter Strike, terrorism and weapons of  mass destruction here.  Before I could morph into the Goddess of Strife, however, they run out of internet-cafe cash and leave, plotting, perhaps, their next terror attack.

I am now left to eavesdrop on the guy who is chatting away in hopes of coming up with the perfect Super Lotto combination.  He has 30 minutes, he says, before he has to stand in line at the lotto outlet.

Alas, I had to leave before he could spew out the "perfect" numbers.  

November 9, 2010

Major, Major Mode

While I was away...

... Baby James has morphed into Bimby

... PNoy has gone from Shalani to Liz

And the world turned ... and turned.

Meanwhile, I was--and am--left to deal with raging issues.  Issues like: why, oh why am I suddenly in a beauty-pageant mode? And why do I have to sit through three-hour meetings every other day to get Miss Sosogon off the ground?

Me, who had my major, major heyday in the forgotten '80s and whose only "titles" were Miss Thailand in my school's United Nations week celebrations and the Reyna Elena '86 (which I won because, as my sisters would always remind me, it was a money contest)!

As I am in the habit of debating with myself, I had two ready answers:  The office order that is now tucked in my 201 File and karma.  I won't get into the workings of the bureaucracy so let us leave the office order alone.  As for the karma part, I think this is what I get for taking to the streets GABRIELA fashion in the '90s in jeans, sneakers, batik and tubao.  And for causing monstrous traffic jams in the periphery of the Quezon City circle.

Karma is, of course, inescapable. And so excuse me while I powder my nose and hie off to the conference room.