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For a more coherent account on the last day of the Manila Book Fair, check out my post on the Read or Die blog.

What with work, clothed photoshoots, fattening up at Something Fishy, and making music with Kristel, today was the only day I could devote to helping out Read or Die at the Manila International Book Fair. And by “helping out” I mean standing at the WikiPilipinas booth in a WikiP shirt, being overall useless since they seemed to have all the manpower they need. I had originally signed up to blog for the Read or Die website, but I couldn’t even do that using the awesome new iMacs cos the WikiP folks wouldn’t let me go to any other site but WikiPilipinas and Filipiniana.Net. Oh wells. So me being me, I sneaked off to wander around the book fair even though I already have a large stack of unread books in my room, no time to read them, and no money to buy new ones.

And that was when I encountered the Church of Scientology.

Aliens! Zombies! Vampires! Dinosaurs! Xenu!

Now, anyone who knows me well should know that I’m not…particularly religious. I already have enough trouble believing that a guy who got nailed to a tree came back to life to save us from “original sin”. What more with the notion that all our problems are caused by the spirits of aliens stuck to our bodies. But I was bored and my friends were busy, so what the hell. Let’s take the free stress test! And let’s have someone from the Church of Scientology capture the moment in binary form because no one will believe me if I tell them about this unless I have picture proof!

Dun dun duuuuun

Any emotionally unstable 21-year old would be the perfect sucker for the Church of Scientology. Especially if the emotionally unstable 21-year old constantly worries about things that she shouldn’t really worry about. Like her career or lack thereof. Her dating life or lack thereof. The purpose of life. The meaning of life. The fact that she’s starting to resemble a dumpling with every passing day. The fact that she wishes she were a girl whose biggest life crisis is not owning the latest Manolo Blahnik pumps instead of a girl who worries about not being worried about not owning the latest Manolo Blahnik pumps. A complex creature such as myself should have stress levels waaaaaay off the charts.

The arrow barely moved a millimeter when I touched the metal rods of the E-meter.

Is this the face of a stressed-out chick?

“Think of something stressful,” the guy suggested helpfully. “What’s stressing you out at the moment?”

I paused. “Well, there’s this guy. Or was. He stresses me out.” I kept my eyes on the meter and thought of every single stupid emo moment I’ve had ever since I met him. It’s ironic that the most “normal” guy who’s ever shown a flicker of interest in me should be the one to cause the worst emotional roller coaster ride I’ve ever been on, dating-wise. But should that really surprise me? “Expect the unexpected” is the underlying theme of my life.

The arrow moved a second too late, and not by much. I was unimpressed. And so was the Scientologist because he suggested that I think of something else that’s been stressing me out.

“Work,” I replied immediately. “But then you know–who doesn’t get stressed over their jobs?”

AHA! STRESS!!!!

Finally, the arrow jerked to life as if possessed by the spirits of otherworldly creatures . “Ahhh,” the guy said. “You’re stressed.” Um, no shit Sherlock.

The Scientologist then began to give me his spiel on dianetics and how Scientology can help me get rid of stress forever and ever and ever. I was too busy being disappointed to listen. Look at me - I’m so lost and clueless as to what to do with my life and the things that stress me out! Conning me into joining a religious group that believes in aliens should take absolutely no effort, if it means never having to feel negative emotions for the rest of my life. Then again, perhaps I’m not as lost and clueless as I think I am. Getting depressed, angry, confused, and feeling downright sucky is an inescapable part of being alive. While being despondent is no fun, I’d like to think that I grow up a little bit every time I emerge out of a spell. I haven’t reached that rock-bottom point where I’ll believe in anything to achieve some measure of happiness, sanity, or contentment - and I won’t allow that to happen. At the very least, I know I can handle all the crap life throws at me without dropping my responsibilities, taking out my anger on other people, and inflicting harm on myself. The worst I ever do is brainfart on whoever’s online. Which is probably why I haven’t seen half of my friends list on YM in a while.

The rest of the book fair went pretty smoothly, and you can read about it on the post I made in the Read or Die blog and look at the photos in my Picasa because my brain is too dead to remember anything else. Oh oh, except for the guys who showed up at the book fair as Star Wars characters! There was a Jedi knight, a Sith lord, Queen Amidala, and a bunch of Storm Troopers. OMG. I thrust my camera into the hands of whoever friend was nearby and poked the costumed folks. Picture?

Happy happy fangirl

I wanted to take a picture with the hot Sith Lord, but I could see that Khursten and Arpee were already rolling their eyes and giving me these “whatta dork” looks. Dammit. If I didn’t have Read or Die duties to attend to, I would have thrown myself at his feet and promised to give him Alderaan and 40% of the planets in the universe if he would marry me. Then we would have sped off in my gunship and lived happily ever after, enslaving civilizations in a galaxy far, far away.

Sith Lords turn me on

(Seriously though, is there a Star Wars cosplay group I can join? I am willing to spend any amount of money to wave a purple lightsaber while dressed in an authentic Sith Lord outfit. And hooking up with a fellow Sith Lord doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, either.)

For those of you who don’t know, Bunifa Latifah Harifah Sharifa Jackson is a poised, polite, extremely amicable African-American character from MadTV. When I feel down I always watch her videos on YouTube because nothing cheers me up like Bunfia’s antics. Before reading the rest of the entry, do take the time to watch this video just so you can get a fairly good idea of what Bunifa is like and why she is my idol (to some extent).

This morning, I went with my mom to the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) branch in Santolan to withdraw some dollars for my trip to Singapore. I detest going to the bank because I can never figure out which forms are for what, and I groaned inwardly as I stepped inside and saw the horrendously long line. Well it’s either I deal with the line or I go to Singapore completely penniless, so I resigned myself to line-waiting boredom.

My mom stood in the line for me while I filled out the withdrawal slip, and when I took her place, I noticed that there was this muscular guy sitting on the bench a few feet away from me. His face had the word “asshole” written all over it and he was giving me this look that was bordering between lascivious and just plain nasty. I decided that he’s probably the kind of guy who would grab and rape me should I encounter him in a dark, deserted alley, and made it a point to avoid looking to my right, where The Asshole was seated.

When the line started moving closer to the teller, I saw The Asshole get up and approach me. Oh shit. At first, I thought he was going to make “friendly conversation” and attempt to extract personal information from me, but what he did was worse.

He cut the line right in front of me.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, cuts the line in front of Laurisha Faurisha Maurisha Haurisha Dado and gets away with it. *does finger snappy thing* A brutha needs to learn to respect a sista’s place in line.

So I tapped on him on the shoulder and said, as politely as possible, “Excuse me, go to the back of the line. I was here first.”

The Asshole gave me this condescending look and said, “No you were not. I was here first. I was sitting over there”–he pointed to the bench–”and I told to the woman in front of me that. This is my place in line.”

That got my blood boiling. I was standing in line for a good ten or fifteen minutes and the entire time I was there, The Asshole was slouching on the couch like a sultan waiting for his harem to cleanse his body with oil and perfume. Who the fuck did he think he is? I looked him in the eye (he was perhaps almost a foot taller than me) and said, my voice taking on a hard edge, “Still, you weren’t in the line. The entire time I was here, you were just sitting on that bench.”

“Well that’s what the waiting bench is for, isn’t it? For people to sit down while waiting for their turn.”

I gestured to the line, which had grown considerably longer since I had gotten there. “Look! Everybody is standing in the line! Do you see anybody sitting down?”

“Well that’s their fault for not sitting down and using the waiting bench. Besides, my knees hurt.”

I brushed the bangs away from my eyes. “Tough luck. My feet hurt. Everyone’s feet hurts. We’re all suffering from feet problems because this line is moving too damn slow. And just because your knees hurt doesn’t mean that you deserve any special treatment from the world. I don’t give a fuck who you are, but you can’t just sit down like a goddamn senyorito, cut in line, and get ahead of everyone who’s been standing up while waiting for their turn. Get to the back of the line or get out of my way.” *

At this point, I was practically shouting and people were staring. I was half hoping that the guy would punch me, because I’d never been in a physical fight before and I really wanted to take a sock at his mug. I’ll probably get the crap kicked out of me because this dude was a tall, muscular guy, whereas I’m a tiny little waif. But every bruise and broken bone would be worth it. Fortunately (or unfortunately), no fight happened. My mom backed me up and started telling the guy off, and he finally let me go ahead and cut in front of the woman behind me, all the while muttering, “Well that’s why there’s a waiting bench. For people to wait.”

I don’t know what made me more angry though–that The Asshole cut the line in front of me, or that everyone passively accepted the situation. I expected the woman behind me to complain when he decided to back off and cut in front of her. To my surprise, she said nothing. Nobody said anything. How could they just let this asshole cut the line and get ahead of all of them? I wanted to stand on a seat and give everybody a passionate speech about how we need to abolish the non-confrontational behavior inherent in our culture. We need to learn to speak up when an injustice happens to us, or to anyone nearby. It doesn’t matter if it’s something as trivial as a guy cutting the line. When you see someone doing something wrong, you point it out to him and tell him that his actions are unacceptable. It’s no wonder this guy’s a total jerk–he’s used to people allowing him to trample all over them with his big motorcycle boots.

I decided against doing that since my mom and I do a lot of banking at that branch, and I’d hate to have the guard drag me out of there kicking and screaming. That would just be humiliating. So I kept my mouth shut and restrained myself from turning around and shouting profanities at the guy until I finally reached the teller and got my cash.

* The whole exchange took place in Tagalog, which I am rather terrible at–grammatically and phonetically. What I said in this entry is a far more eloquent version than what I actually told The Asshole. I was tempted to intimidate him and respond in English but a) once someone talks to me in Tagalog I’m unable to reply in English, and b) using my knowledge of English to intimidate someone is such a classist thing to do. Note to self: learn verbal sparring in Tagalog.

Unfortunately I don’t have a very interesting typhoon story to tell. My parents picked my sister and I up at the dorm at the ungodly hour of 8:30 because the typhoon was supposed to hit Metro Manila at noon and my mom didn’t want us stranded at the dorm with no food. The moment I got back to the house I went back to sleep, and woke up at noon to the sound of the wind screaming outside my bedroom window. A couple of minutes before I woke up, the huge tree branch (see the picture above) from the tree outside fell on our fence and gracefully decorated the lawn. I hate that I missed seeing that happen.

The ridiculous strength of the storm brought the whole Luzon back into the Dark Ages (aka there was no electricity anywhere; though I know some people may think that the Philippines doesn’t need a huge power outage to be in the Dark Ages, what with our being an uncivilized third world country and all). After a day, I gave up on making little candle wax statues so I ended up staying over a friend’s condo in Makati which had electricity, courtesy of the swanky building’s generator. Naturally I didn’t use the bright lights and the computer to do anything productive, and as a result I am cramming for a test tomorrow. XD

Sunday was spent resting and helping my parents get rid of the fallen tree branch on the lawn. It’s too bad my parents hired some random people to clear it out later that afternoon. There went my career as professional ax-woman. Of course, it didn’t help that the random people offered their services after they spent a few seconds watching me doing a rather awful job and hacking away at the wood.

The billboards have been cleared off the main roads and highways now (I think) and everything is back to normal. If it weren’t for all the uprooted trees and leaves all over school, you wouldn’t be able to tell that a storm just hit this crazy city last week. I hear another one might come in a few days, but I seriously hope it misses Metro Manila. I just want to get this stupid semester over with already.