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ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT I’LL DO THE MEME ALREADY YOU CAN STOP TAGGING ME NOW K?

Last night, I started working on the 25 Things About Myself meme everyone’s been doing on Facebook, but halfway through it I started blathering on about Lacanian psychoalanysis, jouissance, neurosis, and hysterical desire. The whole thing sounded like I was secretly hoping that the Lacanian terminology would disguise the fact that I am a crappy girlfriend for trying to break up with my boyfriend three times this week for no logical reason. Then friends started tagging the crap out of me to do the memories meme, which basically says:

Leave one (or more) memory (-ries) that you and I had together.
It doesn’t matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!
Don’t send a message, leave a comment here.

So I figured, I’d hit two birds with one blog post and combine the two memes together! In this entry I shall list down 25 favorite memories I have of 25 different people, in no particular order. I will not name names, but feel free to guess which one of these is you! (Hint: If I tagged you on this note, you’re probably here. )

1.) The day after I arrived at San Francisco, I fell asleep on your lap at Golden Gate Park because I was too jetlagged to do anything else.

2.) Greeting 2008 by watching slasher movies in my room!

3.) Two days before you left for New York, you slept over and we talked about how you found out that your father isn’t actually your father. Then we went shopping the next day. Come back, I miss you.

4.) Writing songs with you at school or outside my dorm. Being sad with you in general, because it makes me creative for some reason. Did you know that I haven’t made any music since then? Quit your job and write songs with me again!

5.) I have too many favorite memories with you, so it’s a toss between the time we rode through the coastal towns of Bohol on a motorbike to get to the tarsier farm, or you and me pigging out at random places. Food tastes amazing when we eat together.

6.) That time you chased me around Ortigas in your socks and pajamas because I got mad at you and kept walking away. I’m still a little embarrassed at how childishly I reacted. :\

7.) Two words: Sunday school. Okay, I have tons of way better memories with you, but you have to admit – this one is funny in retrospect.

8.) That small party you threw by the swimming pool of your condo!

9.) Being the legal witness to your marriage. I didn’t want to show it, but I was actually tearing up when you guys exchanged vows.

10.) Pigging out with you at Something Fishy after a long night of drinking! (I know, I know, I suck for never making the time to hang out with you guys again.)

11.) The time you left me Sartre on my bed.

12.) Shisha and beer at your balcony while we made plans to go to the Hong Kong film festival. It doesn’t matter that we never made it to Hong Kong, it was great hanging out with you again after all those years.

13.) Those times we kept going to the Market! Market! food court after school with our respective then-boyfriends, whom we now kind of respectively hate.

14.) Taking turns puking in the bathroom the morning after the Hohobag Valentine’s Day party! You tried to teach me how I could induce vomiting, but I couldn’t bring myself to stick my fingers down my throat.

15.) The night before Ale arrived, you slept over and drove me to the airport at 4 am because I couldn’t do it myself. That was really, really sweet of you.

16.) You calling me up when I was in San Francisco to make sure that I was okay.

17.) That time when we were newly friends, and I was depressed, and you sent me that song from Explosions in the Sky to make me feel better. A confession: I actually ended up crying more cos I was *touched*. Yeah. Never mention this to me, k?

18.) Exploring Singapore like total cheapskates: hopping on random buses and trains with no plan in mind, and amusing ourselves by watching the city zip by.

19-21.) Two words: Jef’s condo.

22.) Sitting on the steps across Macy’s while we read through your Livejournal archives. Good times.

23.) That time you broke up with your boyfriend, because it’s when you and I started talking way more.

24.) Smoking with you at the soccer field after the worst gig ever.

25.)The night you randomly came over and made amaretto’s in my room!

Whenever I get struck by an idea, I become fixated by it until the idea becomes reality – or until a better idea comes along to distract me from the previous idea. Last weekend, I had the idea to enroll in fashion school and today, I did just that. Ever since I started my ukay-ukay blog, I’ve been reading up a lot about fashion, trends, and have been paying more to the clothes I wear. And when I stayed in Saturday night, nursing a bad migraine, it occurred to me that dabbling in fashion design might not be such a bad idea. Sewing is a skill that I can always use as a hobby or as a way to augment my income if (IF!) I become part of the department’s junior faculty. Never mind that I have absolutely no eye for design whatsoever, or that I damn near sewed my finger onto the fabric the last time I was in front of a sewing machine. I am fairly confident about my taste in style, and I am capable of doing whatever I put my mind into – until I get distracted by something else.

Today, I dropped by the Fashion Institute of the Philippines at San Miguel and Shaw and signed up for the basic sewing course for ladies’ wear. What I like about this class, apart from the fact that seems designed for sewing noobs like myself, is that I can set my own schedule and drop by the Institute whenever I feel like it, as long as I complete the six projects within six months.

My first mistake was showing up in a loud red dress and patent leather booties. Thinking that everyone else in a fashun institute would be dressed in more fashunable clothes, I figured I would just kind of blend in the background in my thrift store dress. Unfortunately, the students at the Institute were wearing more muted colors and classic cuts, and my polka dots stuck like a diseased sore thumb (I did, however, get two compliments on my dress, so yay). But there was also a practical reason why I regretted my outfit of choice. A sewing machine is apparently run by a pedal called a treadle (if I remember correctly), and a treadle is incredibly difficult to control when your heel is two inches off the floor.

Because I have to provide myself with my own materials and fabric, I didn’t get to do any actual sewing today. What I did, however, were these needle exercises so I could get used to handling the machine and making neat stitches. The objective was simple: trace the lines on a sheet of paper with my needle, but like many simple things in life, doing it is a lot harder than it looks.

My first attempt made me feel like a fashion school reject but John, the instructor, was incredibly nice and patient. Very much unlike my last sewing instructors, the Home Economics teachers at high school who decided I would die a spinster because no man will ever want to marry a woman who can’t sew. Okay, I exaggerate, but I did always get the lowest grades in Home Economics, mostly because I refused to turn in my projects. My angry teenage self’s reaction to society’s attempt to feminize and domesticate me? Probably.

The exercises got harder and harder, and pretty soon I had to contend with this:

But after two hours of needle exercises, I kind of got the hang of using a sewing machine. It’ll probably feel a lot different when I’m actually sewing fabric for real, but it shouldn’t take me too long to get used to that.

I honestly don’t know where my brief stint at Fashion Institute will take me, if my dreams of mastering churning out dress after dress will indeed come true, or fizzle out like so many dreams I have of myself. Right now, there are so many things I want to do with my life, but because I insist on doing everything all at the same time, I end up spreading myself thin, distracted, confused, and unable to focus on mastering just one thing. Kristel tells me that this sort of distracted behavior is very typical of impatient Arians, but I don’t want to blame this on my zodaic sign. So this is me attempting to organize my life. Tonight and tomorrow, I work on a paper proposal and finish it before class on Thursday. Thursday, I’ve got class until 7. Friday and Saturday, I go back to fashun skoolz and master the sewing machine.

I meant to publish this during the evening of December 31 but writing this entry took longer than I thought, and I was already late for New Year’s Eve shenanigans.

So I’m sitting here at the lobby of the pretentious condominium development my grandparents insist on living in when they’re at the city, getting a little bit of quiet before all sorts of new year’s eve mayhem covers the city in smoke and noise. Or maybe it won’t. For the first time ever, it’s raining like June or late May, which means that people won’t be lighting up as many firecrackers as they usually do. This time last year, Anne and I were holed up in my room where she was reviving my love and interest in slasher flicks, zombie movies, and horror film in general. I think we were watching The Hills Have Eyes, or maybe it was Hostel 2.

It’s crazy how 2008 just flew by like that, considering that December has been a slow, languid month for me. It feels like I spent most of my time sleeping, and my waking hours trying to do whatever it takes stay awake, simply because sleeping as much as I have been can’t be that healthy. Except for reading a couple of chapters on Mao Tse-Tung’s life on his birthday (December 26), I’ve had little interest in theory, history, and books in general. Maybe I’m going through another one of those moments again. I know I’m going to regret not being as productive as I should have been once I go back to school and remember that I’m supposed to be a graduate student who decided that her destiny lies in the academe. But I certainly don’t regret the time I set aside for the people who matter.

Photo by Fritz-paparazzi

One of this month’s highlights was hosting this year’s Man Blog Christmas party at my parents’ house. The Man Blog website and forums may be dead now, but my relationships with the smartest, wittiest, crassest guys and girls from the local blogosphere are still very much alive. Sometimes I think that maybe I should trade them in for nicer friends (just look at their gift suggestions for me this Christmas), but what would life (and my weekends) be like without them? Nice people aren’t much fun.

Just to show how much I love them, I pretended that I knew my way around a kitchen and prepared a fiesta ham and beer sauce for the party’s sit-down dinner. On Plurk the next day, Ade said it was the best ham sauce he had ever tasted.

Then we had what Anne calls the geekiest Secret Santa ever. Our presents for each other didn’t get any geekier than books, DVDs, gadgets, and ninja weapons (nunchucks for Jen from Bim!). Except for when Bim went down on Mike because Mike got the Gift of Nothing from us for the second Christmas in a row.

Exactly a week later, on Saturday morning, I woke up to a text message from Luis telling me to get out of bed. I was too sleepy to manage a reply, plus I was still slightly sore at him for ditching us last night. I was dying to get away from the monotony of my life in Manila, and Luis’s answer to my road trip idea was, “Nah, I got a couple of dates lined up for me this weekend.” Then I went online (I live on the Internet, pretty much), where Anne told me to get my things ready and help her look for a hotel in Batangas or Tagaytay. “Luis says we’re going on a road trip,” she said. “And he wants to stay somewhere pricey.”

“WTF I’m not paying for any pricey hotel,” I replied.

“Luis is paying.”

“K.”

After a stressful three hour search, we finally found a pricey hotel at Tagaytay that wasn’t fully booked for the night. Initially, we wanted to look for a place in Batangas so we could hit the beach the next day, but there were no vacancies anywhere. Anne suggested Puerto Galera, but Luis shot that idea down, saying that you needed to go on a one-hour boat ride to get to the island, a boat ride which he “didn’t quite fancy taking.” So cold, hilly, boring Tagaytay it was for the evening, then Batangas the next day. I was so excited – I haven’t seen the ocean in months and I miss the saltwater, sun, and the sand.

Three more hours later, I was done packing a backpack full of summer clothes, Helga finally woke up from her drunken stupor to join us, and we were on the road to Southern Luzon. By 9 pm, I was doing The Ultimate Hotel Expensiveness Test at 8 Suites – you know you’re staying somewhere fancy when you can jump on the mattresses without worrying about breaking your neck or the bed. AND HAHAHA NO PARENTS TO TELL ME TO STOP JUMPING ON THE BED WHEEEEE.

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