laurganism.com |

I just came back from lunch with my best friend Kristel and Aedz, another one of my really good friends from college. By “lunch” I mean “sit at the nearest Starbucks and gripe about boys, school, and life in general over coffee and cigarettes.” No actual eating takes place. Today, however, we were at the Starbucks in Emerald Avenue instead of Katipunan Avenue. Aedz already has a part-time job in the area and Kristel just accepted a job offer as a web content writer. Which officially makes me the only unemployed bum in our group (friends going to med school don’t count).

I’m happy for my friends, of course, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling like I just failed at life. I’ve been sending out resumes but no one has called me for an interview yet, which is far more heartbreaking than never hearing from a guy you really like. I know I can make relatively easy money just by blogging but there’s a lot more I want than just money. I want to join the workforce, I want to build a career and make a name for myself. The kind of career I want though, is the burning question that I haven’t found the answer to–until today.

When I graduated from high school, I was so sure that I wanted to be a diplomat. So sure that in all my college application forms, I ticked off “Political Science” as my major. Then I realized that I hated reading the newspaper and that politics bored me to tears, so I switched to Sociology when I got to Ateneo. (Which was actually a very good move, since I would have had a radically different college experience if I had stayed in Political Science.)

During my junior year, when I was getting A’s and B+’s in my Sociology classes, I decided that I wanted to have a brilliant academic career. I imagined myself in big libraries somewhere in London, churning out dissertation after dissertation on a rickety old typewriter. Then I realized that this would never work out because most of my college days were spent not studying. I get shit grades in exams because my mind automatically goes blank every time I see the questions, no matter how familiar I am with the material. All those A papers–I was just lucky because I figured out which writing style would get me high grades under which professors. It also helped that I have a knack for backing up my conclusions with statistical evidence, despite my loathing for math. I finally junked the academic career idea for good during my senior year. I had a whole semester to do my thesis but guess what–I only started working on it three weeks before the deadline! How I got away with a B, I will never know.

During the later part of my junior year, I decided that maybe I’ll just move in with my boyfriend after college, get married, pop out baby after baby, and become a rotund housewife crocheting doilies in her spare time. Obviously that didn’t work out.

Late last year, I thought, “Fuck this getting a real job shit. I’m going to be a rock star with a full body suit and multiple facial piercings!” \m/ Two horrible gigs later (one in which we got harassed by frat boys) I realized that breaking into the music scene wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought it would be. Currently the band is on hiatus since we’re missing a bassist (but keep your eye on my podcast as we will be uploading demos very very soon).

Early this year I was so sure that I wanted to be a high school English teacher and write my novel in my spare time. I was so sure that when I went to the Placement Office for the routine interview, I had the lady convinced that I knew exactly what I wanted to do after college. Then I realized, who the hell am I kidding? I hate teenagers. Even when I was a teenager I hated teenagers. As for that novel–it’s been a year since I conceptualized the thing and I’ve yet to write a word of it.

Oddly enough, what I really want to do with the rest of my life is so simple and so obvious, it took me this long to realize it. I want to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid, I could write better than I could walk. Which is not to say that I’m a good writer–most of the time I can’t stand reading my own work–but I think I’m decent enough to make a living out of it. The only thing I want to be right now is a web content writer, preferably at the company Kristel works at. From there, who knows. I suppose I can slowly worm myself into literary circles, get published, and win myself a couple of awards, or die as a failure only to become some sort of cult figure years after my death.

The moral of this story: college is a time where you will undergo many many changes. That sweet, wholesome looking girl with the boring haircut–that was me during my freshman year. Obviously I’m nothing like that anymore. At some point, you might think you’re sure about what you want to do when you graduate, and that you’re going to end up marrying your college sweetheart. But four years is a long time and events will happen that could make you emerge an entirely different person 48 months later. One day you’ll wake up and realize that your boyfriend is a douchebag. Or that you’re not at all suited for the course that you’re in. Or that the easy money of a call center job doesn’t sound very appealing after all.

You can make the job-hunting process a little bit easier by doing the following while you’re still in school:
1) Join an organization suited to your interests and slowly work your way up to becoming one of the core members. It looks teh awesome on resumes.
2) Suck up to a professor, preferably the ones with Ph.D’s, so they can give you glowing recommendations to future employers.
3) Good grades are definitely a plus, but I think what employers are really looking for are skills and abilities. So start sharpening those mad writing and Photoshop skillz.

What you really want to do after you graduate–only you can decide that for yourself.

Ever since graduation day, the only TV shows and movies that keep me riveted to my seat belong to the horror genre. I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks downloading and renting out my favorite horror flicks from childhood (Stephen King’s It), re-watching old favorites (Silent Hill, A Tale of Two Sisters), as well as checking out horror films recommended by hoity-toity film critics (The Innocents, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Repulsion). Those that fell under the latter simply bored me to death–too slow paced, not enough blood. Proof, perhaps, that my taste in films is horribly unsophisticated and that I clearly don’t have what it takes to be a hoity-toity critic. Let’s strike that career option off the list.

Supernatural horror films–the ones that involve Japanese women crawling out of the TV or peering at you from under the covers–scare me the most, because my imagination is horribly vivid and I can actually see those ghostly figures in my bedroom, in the dark. I usually avoid ghost movies unless I’m feeling unusually masochistic, or am in the mood to make my fellow moviegoers go deaf. I’ve been told that my operatic shrieks of terror has the potential to break ear-drums.

My favorite sub-category of horror is something I like to refer to as gore-ror (I’m not clever enough to have coined the term; I believe I picked it up from someone). They’re usually psychological horror films or films with minor supernatural elements that are characterized by extreme violence. I’m talking about skulls being crushed open, people being skinned alive, zombies being torn to shreds, humans being devoured by the undead. Nothing makes me jump up and down in my seat like an overactive five-year old than watching someone’s guts spilling on the floor. The more violent the movie is, the happier I am.

One of my favorite gore-ror movies is a little-known film called May. It’s about this girl who couldn’t make friends as a child because of a facial deformity. As an adult, she tries desperately to form friendships and relationships but fails at this due to her lack of social experience. What I love about this movie (spoiler alert: you might want to scroll down to the YouTube video below) is how she kills off all her friends and her ex-boyfriend, chops off their limbs, and sews them up into one big doll. “If you can’t find a friend, make one,” was her mother’s advice as a child. I found that whole mass murder scene very, very satisfying. Like May, I too chop off parts of people that I find beautiful and sew them up to create my ideal person. Unlike May, however, I only do this figuratively. My ideal person (or ideal guy, if you will) is an intricate combination of so many parts from so many people that my biggest fear that he only exists in my head. But I’m young and I’ve only been single for a few months–I’m in no real hurry to make my creation come to life.

Another reason why I love May is because my future husband Jeremy Sisto (Billy from Six Feet Under) is in it, oozing with more sex and manliness than usual. Those broad shoulders! His large, gorgeous, hands! Those shapely lips! His fuck-me curly hair! Jeremy Sisto could use my face to shine his shoes and I’d walk away feeling like a million dollars.

Upon deeper reflection, I think my recent fascination for gore-ror flicks is a result of my quarter-life crisis. Whenever I watch arteries spraying blood and intestines hanging out of people’s stomachs, I can feel every little insecurity I have about myself leave my body and join the blood on the walls. The sight of blood in real life makes me want to vomit, but gore-ror films never make me sick to my stomach. They allow me to live out my deviant thoughts in a more socially-accepted manner. When the credits roll, I feel as clean and pure as a newborn baby, ready to grab the world by the balls (and stuff them down its throat).

Excerpts from my little red notebook. Extremely cushy and sentimental. You have been warned.

“I’m sitting at the departure area of the Singapore budget terminal. I don’t remember feeling so sad about leaving a country before. The last time my chest hurt this much was when things didn’t work out with the last guy I fell in love with (and not due to a near-fatal asthma attack from smoking, as some people might assume). I feel like a Chinese girl who has been forbidden to see and speak to her lover because a marriage to a disgusting pig has already been arranged and is about to take place. But perhaps this analogy is a tad dramatic and inaccurate. No stupid arranged marriage can keep me away from what I love.

I’ve become more than simply attached to this place. I’ve fallen in love with Singapore and its sprawling parks, clean streets, efficient public transportation system, the glittering city lights in the evening. But above all those things, I’ve fallen in love with the people. My last day in Singapore was great. I met up with Evie for a late lunch, after which I sat in a Starbucks and alternated between reading, people-watching, and power-napping. Even coffee can’t keep me from my afternoon naps. In the evening, Nic and I met up with Evie, this time with her boyfriend Budak, and we had beer at this awesome place called Archipelago. Time flew by way too quickly. One moment we were yakking our heads off about blogging, countries we’ve been to, and other fun things, and the next moment we realized that it was almost 9–time for Evie and Budak to catch their film and for me and Nic to take our last train ride back to his dad’s place.

“I try my hardest not to get attached to people and places because saying goodbye to something familiar and safe is one of the hardest things to do in the world. But no matter how high I build my walls and fortify my fortresses, people have ways of slipping through the cracks and crevices that lead to my heart. I damn near cried when I said goodbye to Nic’s dad, who has been extremely generous and hospitable throughout my stay here. I’m going to miss my Singaporean friends very very much, even though I’ve only spent a few hours of my trip with them. I wish I could have stayed in Singapore longer than a week, but I suppose that would make leaving this country even more difficult than it already is.”

If I had been scribbling away in my notebook the moment our plane reached Manila, my thoughts wouldn’t have been as verbose and romantic. Interrupting my sleep is somewhere on the top ten horrible things anyone can do to me. And since I only got about an hour and a half’s worth of sleep, I imagine that the appropriate journal entry would go something like this:

“Fucking hell, don’t make me put my seat up-fucking-right. I wanna fucking go back to sleep. Fuck this immigration shit. Fuck this customs shit. Fuck my luggage. Wait–I’ve got stuff in my luggage. What the hell are you assholes standing for, the doors aren’t even open yet. Oh wait, people are leaving the plane now. Get the hell out of my fucking way asshole, move faster old lady, fuck you fuck you fuuuuuck.”

In our half-dead state, Nic and I hopped off the plane and encountered a poster warning everyone about bird flu. Which made me turn to him and ask, “Bird flu. That’s like, for birds, right?” We pondered on the philosophical question I posited for an entire minute before heading off to immigration. Ah, intelligent early-morning musings.

Now that I’ve informed all my friends about my arrival, it’s time for me to get some fucking sleep. It’s good to be back.