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When I was in San Francisco, my Canon 4 megapixel digicam fell into a pool of saltwater–something that I’m still beating myself up for. Technology hates me, I swear. My first camera phone fell into the beach, my second camera phone got stolen, and recently I got a digital voice recorder that also works as an mp3 player and a flash disk. Less than a week later, the flash disk part stopped working. Rargh. The point is, I want a digicam. It’s highly unlikely that my parents will give me another one because this is the second digicam I’ve rendered unusable. But hey, that doesn’t mean that I don’t want one. The camwhore in me is still alive and well, and I sorely miss being my own attention-whore. But more than that, not having a camera prevents me from capturing the more interesting moments of my life–which have been very few lately since my life currently revolves around the whims of my professors.

Last night, my family celebrated my sister Marielle’s 18th birthday at a buffet dinner at a restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel called Paseo Uno. I invited Pat to come along; I knew he’d appreciate the food and besides, this would be a great opportunity for him to get to know my family and vice versa. Luckily, there weren’t any awkward meet-the-family moments because my family pretty much left the two of us alone (which is usually the case during family dinners; my cousins pretty much ignore me and my aunts and uncles think I’m too young to understand the “adult world”), and everyone was too busy eating to interrogate him or something. The only difficult part of the evening was that it took great effort not to kiss, hold Pat’s hand, or rest my head on his shoulder. I mean, doing those things is practically second nature to me but because my family is very conservative, we’d probably give my dad and my relative heart attacks if we displayed too much affection for each other. And if they all died, who’d pay for the food?

I wish I could describe in more descriptive words how incredibly wonderful that dinner was but my brain is really fried right now. The buffet dinner costs around 1,200 pesos per person but it is well worth the price because the quality of the food is excellent and the atmosphere of the restaurant makes you feel like a million bucks. The dessert table was the best. Not only were the cakes and crepes incredibly orgasmic, but they also had a chocolate fountain. A chocolate fucking fountain, where you can smother anything in wonderful, dark fudge. Towards the end, when we felt like we couldn’t take in any more food, Pat and I got a scoop of vanilla ice cream, put it under the fountain, and voila–the most delicious monster we have created. I was sorely tempted to put my sister’s tiramisu cake under the fountain as well, but by the time the cake arrived I was too lazy and wasted from delicious hotel food to get up.

This was taken during our first round of food. We look very happy since we’ve been starving ourselves all day for this dinner.

An hour and a half later, with our tummies distended. This was the picture’s third take; you can see that Pat’s all like, “Enough already!” Me, I just missed being my own attention-whore.

I wish I could’ve taken pictures of the hotel, the restaurant, and the chocolate fountain but my mom’s fancy camera-phone is too crappy a camera for that. But in any case, that dinner was the best I have had in recent days. In spite of the fact that I’ve eaten enough food in that one night to last me a week, the memory of that glorious buffet will never fail to make me salivate like a Pavlovian dog. I highly recommend Paseo Uno for anyone who loves to eat.

Technorati Tags: buffet dinner

The only reason why I’m writing this at all is because I wanted to show you guys this interesting picture I saw on my favorite LJ community, randompictures. Since I want to make my blog more than just, “Hey, check out this interesting picture I saw on my favorite LJ community, randompictures“, I suppose it’s only proper that I add my opinions on the subject matter at hand, which is the storm called “Katrina” that hit the southern part of the United States. I was a bit hesitant at first because my whole belief system is slightly unpopular but hey, even if everyone in the world would hate me for it, I’d still retain the same opinions.

It is popularly believed that Ateneans (the students who study at my university) are “apathetic” because we don’t really give a flying fuck about the current political and social crises in the world today. While I’m not going to go around wearing an “I am an apathetic Atenean” t-shirt, I’m not ashamed to admit that yes, I do fit into that stereotype. Not by my virtue of being an “Atenean” — if I studied at UP (University of the Philippines), which is known to breed student activists of sorts, I’d still be politically and socially apathetic. Why? Simply because I’ve never given a flying fuck about these things in my life. I mean, the closest thing I’ve ever came to having some sort of political opinion is this entry. Afterwards, I stopped following the whole impeachment case because I have more pertinent and pressing things to worry about than the political upheaval in the country, which always happens whether I care about it or not.

This is basically the reason why I don’t have an opinion on the damage that Katrina caused. Sure, I’d rather it didn’t happen. I’d rather that it didn’t kill so many people and displaced so many families. I’d rather that the relief goods came in a bit faster. But I don’t feel empathy for them or anything like that and because of this, I wouldn’t donate any relief money for them. I don’t know about you, but I think that being honest and not helping out people I don’t feel anything for is a lot better than lying to myself and insisting on giving the same amount of help to the same people I don’t care for.

Do you know what I care about right now? My grades. My primary concern, as a student, is to study. But more than that, I have an oral exam with the most evil Theology professor in school tomorrow and if I fail that, there’s a huge chance that I’ll fail his class (I bombed the previous exam; both are worth 30% of my grade). The next day, I have a History exam, which I haven’t studied for yet because I’ve been focusing on my Theo orals. I also have a paper due for my Japanese Culture class on Tuesday, which I obviously haven’t done either.

Now, if I had a family member or a friend whose home got destroyed due to the storm, it’d be a totally different story because now we’re talking about people I care about. I’d give whatever I could to make things a little easier for them, because they’re people I actually feel some concern for. If I were a taxpayer, I’d start paying a little more attention to Philippine politics because the money I worked my ass for is going to this piece-of-shit government. But I don’t know anyone who suffered from the Katrina storm. I’m not a taxpayer. I’m a student. I’m not going to do my country any service by holding noise barrages or going on a hunger strike at EDSA shrine. What’s that going to accomplish, really? A rally is nothing more than a bunch of people standing in the streets, letting their beliefs be heard by people who already believe in these things. As for a hunger strike, the only interesting thing about that is speculating when the moron starving himself to death for some political cause will die from malnutrition.

The truth is, even if I were a taxpayer, I’d probably not even give that much of a flying fuck about current events. I just want to be left alone, to live, and not be bothered to feel or do something about things that really aren’t any of my concern.

I’m disabling the comments because I’d rather not debate or worse, be given a lecture in my own blog, about my very non-mainstream, non-humanitarian opinions.

I feel like a complete anomaly by saying that I do not have a single girlfriend. True, I hang out with a bunch of really great, intelligent girls at our very own corner of the school that we call The Table. We make fun of the same people, and laugh and bitch about the same things. But that’s pretty much where my relationship with them ends. I don’t think I can ever have another really close female friend because if there is anything I’ve learned from four years of being in an all-girls high school and failed female friendships in college, it’s that women are very emotional, very fickle beings.

I’m sure this scenario is familiar to any girl who has had at least one girlfriend in her life. Friend A does something that pissed Friend B off. Friend B is very pissed at Friend A, but Friend A is unaware of it. Friend B doesn’t tell Friend A for one reason or another, and her negative feelings towards Friend A bubble and boil inside her until one day, everything explodes like a really intense orgasm. Friendship ends, making things very awkward for everyone else concerned.

I don’t know any woman–including myself–who is honest and up-front about what she feels about another person. I’m trying to change this about myself though because I believe that it is best to let people know the truth even if it hurts them or pisses them off. Blinding somebody with fake smiles and how-are-yous is like making that somebody the town idiot. It’s really not fair. The truth can be a harsh, painful thing–but you’re better off with it than being ignorant. Look at it this way–knowing the truth about yourself allows you to change what has to be changed in order to make you a better person.

The point is, any kind of relationship can’t survive if the two people involved can’t be frank with each other. For a relationship to work, a certain level of trust has to be present. And how can you trust a person with more serious matters when she can’t even tell you what she honestly thinks about you?

And this is why I’m staying away from girlfriends for now. In the unlikely instance I meet a girl who can be honest to me, I’ll be happy to have her as my friend. But until then, I’ll be floating in a nice warm pool called the gray area. Sure, I do miss having girlfriends. I miss the sleepovers, the shopping trips, the makeovers, and most of all, the girl talk. But even if I can do these things with the average woman, I can’t enjoy the experience as much with the knowledge that this person will most probably backstab or lie to me if I unintentionally do something nasty.

In a way, guys have it a lot easier. I mean, if Guy A pisses Guy B off, Guy B can just kick the crap out of Guy A. They’ll most probably forget about it the following morning and won’t spread crap about each other to other people.