We Threw All Life's Instructions Away

Why is the last mile the hardest mile?
My throat was dry, with the sun in my eyes.
- The Smiths

January in Review: Quitting Smoking + First Climb of the Year

It's never been a secret to anyone how badly I was addicted to smoking, and I've always pandered to the habit without any compunction. There was no guilt involved, no feelings of self-loathing. I loved cigarettes (my fondness tipping towards Marlboros) and I always enjoyed pulling all that smoke in. There wasn't any real reason behind the habit itself; when I began smoking, it was mostly out of curiosity, the sort that the threat of cancer and emphysema could not placate. I lit up whenever I could, lit up first thing in the morning, eventually giving the day its proper end by stubbing out a cigarette by the stairwell (my sister forbade me to smoke inside the flat).

Last December, though, I'd gotten a rude shock about how long I'd been pinned to this habit. Someone had asked me, quite casually, how long I'd been smoking. "Oh," I shrugged. "About five years, I think." Five years? I furrowed my brow and counted again – turns out that I'd been smoking for eight straight years with real intensity: I used to polish off a little over two packs a day, with smoking so tightly woven into my daily activities and the empty hours that separated them.

When I joined AMCI two years ago, I wasn't at all discouraged by the fact that trainees weren't allowed to smoke. I often sneaked out in between runs and ramps and puffed away at a coveted cigarette, managing all the while to stay in good form. I was one of the fastest female runners in our batch, and I usually hefted my way up a mountain quicker than my other batchmates could. Once in a while, one of my fellow trainees would ask me, "How do you do it? Man, you smoke, but you're pretty fast."

I didn't really feel any desire to quit; that is, until I realized that I had stuck to my nicotine fix for too long. I knew, too, that however strong I was now, another two years of smoking would eventually cut me down. Not to mention the fact that I was hoping to train for my first 21K race this year, and that I was planning to climb more mountains than I did in the last two years. Most importantly, though, I felt bad about exposing Jose to so much second-hand smoke, and I knew that he worried a lot about how I was cramming all that shit into my lungs.

The habit had also gotten bad enough so that I hunted for Marlboros with acute desperation, lurching out of the flat at 3 in the morning to go looking for them. In a public setting where I found myself without cigarettes, I would actually approach strangers and ask if I could mooch off of them. It was that bad. I am not making this up.

And so the cigarettes clearly had to go. I smoked an entire pack in half an hour on New Year's Eve, pegged it as my last, and haven't looked back since. The first three weeks were unbelievably bad, and I was crabby, irritable, ill-humored, and generally a pain in the ass for quite a while. Headaches spiderwebbed from under my skull, and I was pretty much dizzy nearly all the time. For a while, I got pretty damn sick and had to stop working – I just couldn't get up from the bed anymore.

I don't think I would've been able to handle quitting if it weren't for Jose, who was wonderfully supportive and had rallied me on patiently. I also had Martin to call up whenever I felt the need for a cigarette, which did work well. Nonetheless, I still get blindsided by the fiercest cravings. It doesn't help that my friends (e.g., Margie and Waps) are complete saints and will smoke pointedly in front of me oh god the pain the goddamnfucking pain. You hear that, Margie?? Waps?? Thanks, guys.

It's been three months, folks. Please don't give me a cigarette.


-----


Our batch managed to get the first climb of the year going, with Jenipay heading the whole effort. The destination: Mt. Sembrano, an extinct volcano in Rizal, touted as an easy hike that would take roughly 4 hours of trekking to get to the summit. We all made it to the peak in around 2 hours, and everything about the climb was insanely fun, but I was surprised at how out of shape I was. I hadn't run in a year (my shoes gave out on me, and I had no money to buy a new pair), and I had climbed all of twice in 2008 (again, I didn't have much money).

In the jeep to Rizal, grinning

At the jump-off point.

Foreground: Maxine and Nikka. At the back: Alex and Jenipay

Taking a short breather.

Mike was pretty much my trekking buddy in Sembrano, and I huffed and grunted up the crags and over the dirt path, the weight of my pack screaming down my back and the sweat running in rivulets from my forehead to my eyes, my nose, between my breasts and down my legs forming a sudden roiling river whorled and rushing around my feet goddammit all that sweat!! Fucking hot day.

Mannie and the guests flailing behind me.

Goin' up the summit, bright red as always.

Sexy. Very sexy.

Times like these, I always rue the fact that I bring so much shit with me during climbs. I already had a rice cooker in my pack, an entire tent, kilos of campsite food, 4 liters of water (we were supposed to bring only three, but I always need my extra liter of hangover water), 1.5 liters of Coke, a bottle of rum, not to mention all my clothes and toiletries, my sleeping bag, a towel, trail food, etcetera. Exhaustive and exhausting. Mike was going ahead of me – Mike, whom I used to overtake easily in our runs and hikes, and who is now one of the strongest guys in our batch. Well, what can I say? It's actually really impressive. Kudos to you, man.

Jenipay with the view spreading out below her.

Summit

Summit again.

A view of Laguna Lake

Joanne would catch up with us every so often, but most of the group – Jenipay, Maxine, Alex, Ollie, Badong, and Nikka – trailed farther behind. Ahead, our guests (who were carrying only alcohol, lucky bastards), led by Mannie and Aaron, were making their way steadily to the summit. Alman would join us later, winding up the trail at 7 in the evening, almost getting lost before he found us on the summit, where we had just finished off a rich dinner and were starting to bring out the vodka and the rum.

Ollie, Mannie, me, and Mike

At the camp kitchen: Maxine, Ollie , Joanne, and Jenipay

Mike and I, chopping up spuds.

The drunkenness begins!

Nothing ever beats the summit of any mountain, though. Sembrano's expansive peak was carpeted by sheets of endless kans grass rippling high and low over the terrain, and there was just enough room and firm earth for us to anchor our tents on. The wind was a formidable presence. It whipped us all around and sent the mountain chill seeping through our jackets and cutting right to the bone. The gale made it really hard to take a piss. Imagine tumbling down the steep incline of a mountain with your knickers gathered around your knees. I can swear that the wind was strong enough to do exactly that if you weren't careful.

Sunrise.

Grabbing beers in Manila after the descent.



Post-climb meeting at Galileo. Cheese and wine on the house, thanks to one of our guests.

All in all, the climb up Sembrano was a great way to kick off the New Year, especially since I had been starved of climbs for all of 2008. AMCI is infamous for labeling hard ascents as "fun climbs", but when we called the Sembrano trek a fun climb, we meant it to the core. The descent -- one of my favorite parts of any climb -- was pretty sweet, since I got to hurtle down the rocky trail and skip down the path, gravity reeling me in towards the foot of the mountain at a speed I could barely register in my head. Trees blurred into streaks of green at the margins of my vision, and the maws of the forest canopy opened wide to let the sun flood into my immediate view. All around me, grace and music. The wind dancing wild, the sound of my footsteps meeting the ground, the world's own drumbeat exploding hot from my body.

(Thanks to Maxine and Mike for the pictures.)

Up Next: February Review – Two-Part Valentine's, the AMCI Gala Night, and Busting My Knee

Frankly, Mr. Shankly, Since You Ask: You Are A Flatulent Pain In The Ass

You got blood on your face, you big disgrace,
Wavin' your banner all over the place.
- Queen

Much has already been said about the "25 Random Things..." meme that's become a monolithic sensation on Facebook -- Facebook, which is itself a Goliath of a phenomenon to begin with. Just today, my eyes floated over to the box where my Facebook contacts are stowed away, and realized with a start that I had 472 "friends". There is no way I have that many friends. Acquaintances, maybe, but not friends. In fact, if we're going to be honest here, I actually do not have friends. Most likely because I have dreadlocks growing out of my nostrils and an extra, functioning ear sprouting up from the middle of my forehead. Everyone seems intent on avoiding me. Did I mention that I'm part of a traveling circus act? I did? Excellent.

As I was saying, a great majority of us have become painfully aware of the "25 things" meme, ever since Facebook Notes bearing the same title mushroomed all over our News Feeds. Before all else, however: don't you think that the word meme is a real stinker? A festering basket of unwashed socks? An odious, putrefied chunk of Icelandic rotten shark? Why can't we just call them surveys, quizzes, or online chain questionnaires?

The other day, I was thinking about the etymology of the word "meme", and came up with only one plausible explanation. Given the self-absorption so flagrantly advertised on these questionnaires, I figured that "meme" is probably a conjoining of two separate words: "me", repeated twice. You know, in the same way that the overzealous kid in your class would raise his hand in response to the teacher's question and say, "Me! Me!"

I know it's ridiculous. Just a theory.

So let's go back to the topic I first raised, and which I eventually got derailed from because I have the attention span of a bobblehead. I was talking about that Facebook survey for "25 Random Things About Me", and for which I'd been tagged and tagged and tagged again by various people. Nothing wrong with that. Once you've been tagged by a fellow victim, you're supposed to draw up your own list of 25 "random" things about yourself and tag 25 other victims to go through the same elaborate ritual.

It isn't all that bad; in fact, I was about to draw up my own list of 25 things, and then I thought, Why in god's name would I do this, when I already have a blog, and even then I have a big mouth, so at this point, people probably know more about me than they'd like to? Not to mention the fact that your ordinary Facebook account is liberally peppered with contacts whom you barely talk to, have no real desire to talk to, but who are nonetheless privy to various status updates you execute on your account. The truth is that if it weren't for Facebook, you wouldn't even be caught dead interacting with them because they go clubbing and are particularly fond of Embassy, which is enough for you to condemn them because you're a judgmental prick.

One of the reasons why I decided against doing the whole survey was that along the way, I had begun to discover unnerving facts about some people, only because their 25 Things were laid out spread-eagle all over Facebook. One of my contacts shared that because she is singularly lazy, she occasionally entertains the idea of passing water on her bed instead of toddling over to the bathroom to take a proper piss. Of course, she was quick to reassure us that this hasn't actually happened yet, but her disclaimer was too late! The damage had been done! It's gotten so that I can't dissociate her from that uric fact, oh no. When I finally bump into her one of these days, I'll have to try VERY hard not to imagine her sloshing around on her bed, the sheets soaked, the whole room smelling like a toilet bowl. I would have to resist tossing her a disc of Albatross Bathroom Deodorizer the next time we meet.

There are other, more mystifying entries. In her list of 25 random facts, one girl (whom I fortunately do not know) wrote, "i treasure my friends but im nOt shOwy abOut it..their scent alOne makes me gO back in time.." The exact meaning of this statement escapes me. Their scent--? Makes her go back in time--? How is that connected to the fact that she treasures her friends? I'm afraid the leap in logic is much too staggering.

The same person later says, "many will mistaken me fOr anything, i usually thOught sO Of myself thOugh but im wOrking On them.." Ah, what a cryptic message! It trumps even the most obscure Philosophy readings I wanted to set fire to when I was in university!

And then this: "i like tO spend a lazy evening w/ medicine related stuff - war mOvies, pizza and a few Ounces Of my fave drinks.." (Wait, weren't you talking about medicine? Lady, you might wanna lay off the smack.) Later on: "i have sad-lOOking eyes even if i smile..they said, nOw..i thOught it may be true." Oh my, I am asphyxiating here. I have to stop giggling. Is this dame on drugs? Clearly she is! Heidegger might have fucked around with one too many heads, but at least his Caps Lock key wasn't acting up on his O's. YOu knOw, like this, fOr example.

Inspired by this girl's list, I decided to hunt for more gems on Facebook. One guy was especially appealing after I gave his list a quick, cursory scan. From the items he listed down, I gathered that he might have just come in fresh from the U.S.; he probably studied there for high school, and had to be kicked back to this country reeking of Fil-Am hubris. Here are some of his precious statements:

"I still feel like I'm in high school. Freshmans here in the Philippines range from 16 to 17 yrs of age." (Wow. Freshmans. This kid is a genius.)

"I once was in juve for stealin deodarant. Yea. Go ahead and laugh ya ugly son's a bitches!" (Unfortunately, I cannot laugh. Not only did you try to steal some deo, you also got caught. You are a moron.)

"A girl with a beautiful smile and a pair of angel eyes will capture my attention QUICK. 'I said Yo0o0o! I don't know your name but excuse me miss, I saw you from across the room.' Bet I'll tell her dat. ughh!" (Ughh is correct.)

"I file my nails. Yea! I enjoy doin it too Francine! :-p" (That's nice.)

"One of my friends still owe me P600. Don't worry, I'll be getting that soon. I'll bust a cap in his ass son if he don't pay up!" (A true blue mafioso, this guy. Watch out for his deadly grammar, sickly spelling, and daintily filed nails.)

The point of this whole post is to explain to you why I will not do that 25 Random Goddamnfuckingthings About Me survey, and why I have long ago ditched my first draft (after I couldn't think of what to put down after Item #5). Look, we have too many of these Einsteins running around and delighting us with their own lists. How can I possibly compare? Of what import will my voice be in the face of such Facebook luminaries? Oh, these young prodigies humble me. Somebody put me back into my place: on a heat-stricken dashboard, nodding interminably -- a perfect agreeable little bobblehead.

This is the Seaside Town that They Forgot to Bomb, Come, Come, Come, Nuclear Bomb

Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.
- Simon and Garfunkel

As I did mention in previous posts, I owe you all an entry about the weekend trip to Corregidor that Jose and I took last year. Last year, meaning, November 15, 2008. Last year, meaning, three long months ago. As you can see, the subject matter has lain inert too long, enough so that I should have discarded the notion of even writing about it at this point. Unfortunately for everyone, I still feel like crowing about the trip -- which was also Jose's birthday gift to me -- largely because it's already gained the status of being The Best Weekend of My Life, cheese aside.

Now let's veer our attention to the island of Corregidor. If you've read enough about it, you will most likely have bumped into a few references that say that the island is shaped exactly like a tadpole. Even WikiPedia (which is not an entirely reliable source, but still!) says something similar in its entry for Corregidor, and I quote:

The island is about 48 kilometers west of Manila. It is shaped like a tadpole, with its tail running eastward, and has a land area of 9 km².

I want to tell you that all these sources that claim that Corregidor looks like a tadpole is lying. Lying! Corregidor might resemble a tadpole, I'll give them that. But the truth is that the island looks more like a sperm cell than a tadpole. It's true. Don't let the Catholic Church tell you otherwise.

To illustrate, here's a map of Corregidor, complete with indiscernable names and all those useless lines and squiggles you so often find in maps:





And below, a side-by-side comparison of a nice widdle tadpole and a sperm cell.





I mean, look at that tadpole! Isn't he the cutest thing? One day he will grow up to be a frog, and I will want to cuddle up to it when I'm lonely late at night. That sperm cell, however. You might as well call it the Corregidor Reproductive Cell. Hee hee, I'm so witty. The Corregidor Reproductive Cell! Biology books everywhere must be revised.

Back to the trip. It's pretty hard to give you a blow-by-blow account at this juncture, since three months have passed, and everyone knows that the state of my memory is comparable to a hunk of Swiss cheese: dense, but full of those goddamn holes. Anyway, enough of that. I want to start where the trip begins: in a bus full of ooh-ing and aah-ing Filipinos, plus a sprinkling of your requisite white foreigners.

Jose and I on the Tramvia, the island's nod to the trams that used to ply the routes along Corregidor.

I was part of the ooh-ing and aah-ing contingent because so much of that island invited nothing less than raw wonder. The tram-like bus we rode on coursed over the island's concrete roads, which snaked between cliffsides and hushed woods, forests that wouldn't let you peer into its heart . Ruins lay in the very same state they were found in, a doleful toppling of beams and charred wood, the concrete rich with lichen and sodden with history's sap.

A park employee in Philippine military garb during the Japanese-Filipino war.

We slinked through dank, labyrinthine tunnels chilled and weighted by the presence of a thousand unseen things, hands that weren't there when you turned around. Our guides showed us the ammunition that had been used during the war, all the cannons and the mortar shells and the scars they bore, the way they were later driven into the earth to become sleeping, harmless juggernauts.

Jose's big gun.

In front of the Malinta Tunnel

Inside the Malinta Tunnel.

In Corregidor Inn, dicking around.

Jose and I spent the night in the Corregidor Inn, which had a wheezing (but surprisingly efficient) airconditioner, white linen sheets, and a general appearance that made it look like a picture straight out of a history book. I will no longer talk about the room or any other activity related to it, because I will gross you out if I go any further, and I don't want to make myself look like a hussy even if I already look like one, in which case, I would like you to shut up.

While that weekend in Corregidor was amazing -- especially since I had spent it with Jose -- I would have been a fool to assume that we would discover something new there. On that island, our eyes met nothing but secrets, and what was ostensibly disclosed to us gave way to more stories that we could not plumb into. Our position in the timeline didn't permit for anything beyond some access to a body of conjecture, a smattering of facts, a relic sealed in a glass case.

What I found instead was this: the island does not mourn itself, and it proceeds anyway in the fashion that it's expected to. Its forests have overcome the violence from decades back, the woods teem with birdcall, and fields of emerald grass lie asprawl around the island. Nature has seen, moved on and forgotten, but there we were, thinking of the dead and gunfire and a war we had never experienced, the onus of remembering sitting square and restless on our chests.

If You Knew My Story Word for Word, Had All of My History

With the drive and ambition and the zeal that I feel--
this is my time.
- The Smiths

Before I hie off for my first solo evening run of the year, I want to say that I'm not sure if changing my blog template was the right move. On one hand, the old design was mine, and there will be none other like it, only because I had labored over it myself until my ears bled HTML and the color codes spoke to me in my sleep. On the other hand, I would be a fool to be sentimental about blog themes (and it's just a blog theme after all!) but everyone knows I'm a fool, anyway, so what's the use of concealing my sentimentality?

Oh dear. I actually forgot to save the old template. I kind of miss it and want to hold it close to my chest until my breasts suffocate it, but I don't think you can accomplish that with something as abstract as a blog template. And anyway, I have a flat chest, so really, my ribcage will do the suffocating. I do like this new design -- make no mistake -- but that bucolic-looking idyllic-chateau image at the header is making me break out into a sneezing fit. The picture literally releases pollen in generous puffs. If I had any Photoshop skills -- or rather, skillz -- I would have plastered a donut in the countryhouse's stead, if only to keep up with this blog's impossible, gluttonous theme. (Update: The image in the header has already been replaced with a donut, thanks to graphic designer-friends Pol and Ego. To view the original cheesy chateau, please click here.)

I know we're already in the middle of January, even past the mean of it, but I want to greet you all a Happy New Year. This blog has lain torpid for too long, which means that I am a lazy bastard who would rather engage in pointless exercises (e.g. absentminded knee-scratching, armpit hair elimination, toenail clipping) in lieu of updating my blog.

Anyway, I owe you guys (if you're still keeping tabs!) a post about Corregidor, which was lovely, which Jose had treated me out to because he is tops. I also want to talk about Christmas and the fact that I HAVE QUIT SMOKING AND IT'S MY 20TH DAY WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A DRAG FROM A CIGARETTE! The withdrawal period was demented, though, in most every level you can imagine that word to possess.

I will talk a bit more soon because I have a big mouth and cannot resist, but I need to go and run in my new running shoes (which were given to me by Jose as a present -- YAY! -- and are awesome and wonderful to run in). I think I will do at least 5 kilometers tonight. The asphalt calls!

Love,
Peachy

Now Look At That Face, It's So Old

Oh, the pain in my arms!
Oh, the pain in my legs!
Oh, my shiftless body.
- Morrissey

This entry is going to take a lot of work, given all the wild developments that have appeared in the last month or so. On the 20th of November, for example, I was walking up the stairs to our apartment, feeling as though the evening was so nameless and ordinary as to deserve being cut short by immediate sleep, when a cursory glance at one of the steps caused me to stop in my tracks, saucer-eyed and open-mouthed.

What I saw then was, by far, the most arresting thing I had ever seen in my entire life. Some activity could be detected inside a crack on the step, and closer inspection revealed that an entire family of miniature people was dancing the salsa right there, complete with costumes and music! I swear to god I saw this. I mean, thumb-sized people just gyrating there, and a lot of them were wearing nice little feather boas and slugging back a lot of miniaturized Pale Pilsens. I am not fabricating this, I swear to god. Then the lillitputians all began dancing around my feet, and we shared beer and exchanged phone numbers, although I do not intend to be friends with them.

So let's move on from that event and go on to the rest of the past month's most exciting parts, or, as Filipinos like to call them, happenings. I am unsure whether this is a Filipino quirk or not, although I am quite certain that happenings, as a word, does not exist. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

But yes, where were we. HAPPENINGS! First to come up was my birthday, on which I inexorably turned 25. This age has always been a continent floating far away from where I was – until this year, that is. 25 was not a possibility in my book, and it was ranged alongside other fictitious entities, such as Perseus and Bigfoot and Ben Affleck's acting prowess. We are thus talking about an age that I had never imagined myself crossing into, except that the impossible happened on the 5th of November this year, and I am now under the mercy of liver spots and wrinkles and arthritic limbs.

HAHA, I'M KIDDING! I'm still as spry and flexible as ever, so much so that I can still contort myself into an improbable position where one of my feet ends up right above my head. I am not kidding. It's a simple matter, executed only when I am seated. The procedure involves the act of grasping my leg, pushing thigh against belly, and finally positioning my foot overhead. Please do not attempt this in haste, because only a huge amount of natural skill will enable you to do this, and I am clearly a talented person. I can also squeeze my entire fist into my mouth.

So I turned 25, and Jose and I celebrated (!) this fact over rare steaks at House of Minis. This was the first time I had ever had my steak rare, and while the whole experience was novel and ridiculously delicious, nothing catapults me beyond the delineations of pleasure than a medium-rare steak can. Wait, no, sex does that, too. You are probably wishing that you didn't read that, but I can't recant the statement, sorry.

Jose and I, pre-steak.

I also humiliated myself that night by weeping in the restaurant, mostly because Jose's gift to me was the best present I have ever received in my entire life. He gave me his eternal love, the mention of which should be accompanied by an appropriate song like "Endless Love" by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie. HAHAHA! That was just for comic relief. In truth, he did give me the best presents that night, including a Tefal frying pan, personalized magazine covers, and the piece de resistance (which is French for "resistant piece"), an overnight trip to Corregidor.

My favorite pseudo-magazine covers

The frying pan was something I'd regularly fantasized about because I was getting sick of working with our present frying pan; it was beginning to develop an unhealthy obsession with any sort of food I smacked down on it. See, each time I tried frying anything with the damn pan, it would never surrender the food to me, and I would end up wrangling with it until it gave up and spat out whatever I was cooking. In the end, anything I fried looked pitiful, similar in appearance to sea cucumbers that had been mangled beyond recognition.

No more ugly pancakes, HAH!

The Tefal frying pan was therefore a blessing, but my birthday crying fit was actually prompted by the Corregidor trip. I had always wanted to visit that island, largely because I have a thing for ruins and places steeped in tragic histories. Jose had planned it all behind my back, which worries me now, since that obviously exemplifies his capacity for subterfuge. Iiiiii'm kidding!

Corregidor's famed ruins.

At this juncture, I would like to start talking about the Corregidor trip, but I will have to reserve that for subsequent entries, because I am too tired at this point. Unknown to you, I have been contorting all this time just to prove to myself that I can shove one foot over my head, and all that exertion has taken its toll on me. It's tough being a geriatric. Hand me that bottle of Omega liniment, please, and bring me a couple of Dr. P adult diapers. Thank you.