Be Calm, Look Cute

Now if the sweater has, like, reindeer on it
Or is a funny color like yellow, I’m sorry,
You can’t get away with a sweater like that.
Look for brown, or gray, or blue.
Anything other than that and you know
You’re dealing with someone who’s different.

And different is not what you’re looking for.
- Meryn Cadell

Or maybe different was what you were looking for! Why else would you climb so frequently and with such delirious speed, why else would we catch you dozing off with heavy metal seeping out of your earphones? Who else sleeps to a lullaby of growling men and screeching guitars? Good god, Thads. In the last year I spent as an AMCI trainee, my encounters with you were few but incredibly concentrated, with so much traded between us in the way of crass jokes, smartmouthed ribbing, and musical preferences.

I recall how surprised I was when you told me that you’d gone to Ateneo as well, and that you stuck yourself in something as sanitary and bloodless as Management Engineering. Management Engineering?? Thads, fucking shit, man. And in Ateneo, of all places! I know I went there myself, but I got no school spirit, and nearly everyone was too loaded or pompous or monochromatic, and when you found someone who wasn’t any of those things, it was always a fantastic steal. But of course you would go on to take Fine Arts in UP, of course you would. And of course you would scale mountains at the rate that you did, and of course you would be one of my absolute favorite members in the club. Hey, man, did you know that?

Between Tadian and Ampacao, you and I began tossing out huge mouthfuls of words from Meryn Cadell’s "The Sweater", and I can't tell you how glad I was to come across somebody else who knew of the song, that acidic little ditty, that comet of a tune that flared out of the radio in rare spurts. You said you'd been trying to get a copy of the track for as long as you could remember, and I said, hey, what do you know, I got the song in my hard drive at home. And then you beamed at me and started chanting the words.

Now if the sweater has, like, reindeer on it or is a funny color like yellow, I'm sorry, you can't get away with a sweater like that.

I wish I could still give you that song, email it to you as promised, and maybe I will! In fact, I will e-mail that blasted song to you, even if you'll never see it float up to your inbox, and I'm going to do it just to spite death. I've been thinking of the song since I heard that you'd gone missing, and its words have been spinning around my head even as we received news of you washing up lifeless on Hermana Mayor's shores.

Look for brown, or gray, or blue. Anything other than that, and you know you're dealing with someone who's different. And different is not what you're looking for.

So screw it all, expect that song in your inbox. I'm e-mailing it before the day is over. We won't be seeing you in a long while, Thads, but I want you to know that the song was wrong, that different was what we'd been looking for, that we had found it in you, that you were a funny color and we all loved it, that there is no way, just no way, that it could have been anyone else but you. We're going to miss you to a painful degree, and to tell you the truth, we already do.

Belated Happy Birthday, man. Much love.

In memory of Thaddeus Reantaso,
AMCI Batch 2k5, Bus-Stop Buddy and Friend
(Photo courtesy of Lynda Sison)

Sing To Me

Sunny, send at least one thoughtful letter,
My heart goes out to you.
Tell us all how things are so much better --
My heart, it left with you.
What else can I do?
- Morrissey

News like this can pummel us and kick us right in the shins, but we'll never believe that any of it is real, even as the fact of it flashes white in our faces. You can't leave just like that, you know? I don't want to think of how the current must have kept you from kicking to the surface, your hiking pack pulling you down like death's own anchor, your body resting finally to where they could find it. And then the terrible questions. Why did it have to be you, Jhoana? Would you have stayed if you'd known of the dangers? You always did what you had to do, hauling yourself up to every summit that called to you, taking on mountains with insoluble cheer. Why'd you have to go, Jhoana? You always did what you had to do, but nobody knew it would cost us all so much.

Jhoana Pimentel

26 January 1979 - 22 June 2008

Bye, Jhoana. We will always miss you.

=====

Thaddeus Reantaso, fellow climber and bus-stop buddy, was also swallowed by the river when the group crossed it. He remains missing to this hour, although searchers have combed for him in all possible areas. Please let him be found. Please let him be safe.

We ask for the repose of Jhoana's soul, as well as that of Mr. Joseph Felarca, AMCI guest, who also perished in the river as he was crossing it. Please keep them in mind.

The land that we stand on is ours.

But I'm going to meet the one I love,
At last, at last, at last!!
Because I'm going to meet the one I love,
La dee da, la dee da, oh, mama, let me go!
- The Smiths

One:
If you have been tracking the progress of Gimme That Donut, a blog that (quite honestly) has done an enormous injustice to the word "progress", you would know that it has abandoned both its old address and all its entries previous to this date, and that it has instead moved to this new house, absolutely bare, with no furniture to speak of yet.

That said, please take a seat!




I moved places because I'm easily annoyed at stuff I occasionally come up with, especially if we're talking about blog posts that rely on tasteless jokes on genitalia to prop up the whole structure. I make a lot of these jokes in my older entries, mostly because I have nothing of great importance to say to humankind. As you all know, I try to make up for this deficiency by being as offensive as possible, which I admit is the kind of modus operandi you'll take on only if you have gorgonzola for brains.

Anyway, I wasn't annoyed only at older posts, but was also getting peeved at the URL itself, the blog's color scheme, the general smell and feel of it, and am therefore –

Okay, I'm done explaining!


Two:
That said, the crass jokes will probably persist, and I hear that the French like gorgonzola very much.


Three:
Although I've gone up two mountains in the last month, I can't say that I really trekked up Mt. Kibungan for the Big Brother Big Sister project, which was held late last May. All that opened up before us was a single paved road, with all its miles coiling around the mountain and branching off momentarily to the school campus that we were headed for.

Walking up the road wasn't bad at all, except that my pack was weighted with the rice cooker, jars of food, and shitloads of other equipment. For some reason, I also hoarded 4 liters of water with me, despite being informed that we needed to bring only 3 liters each for a night in Kibungan. I am now convinced that my having brought along that extra liter could've been caused only by aliens, who abducted my poor flabby body the night before the climb, and returned it the next day after they programmed my brain to think that 4 liters of water was--

The kiddies with their new badass bags.

Anyway, I'd like to think that we all had an excellent time, despite the fact that a Signal No. 3 (?) typhoon was slamming at us on the very night we arrived. The children from the municipality seemed absolutely cheered by all the school bags and supplies we'd brought for them, and I would've kissed all the kids in the cheek if I didn't already look like such a greasy, suspicious character.

With other AMCI members + guests, post-descent.

Four:
The real hiking, however, was asked of us as we threaded our way up to the summit of Mt. Ampacao through the Spanish Trail, which had us plodding through a beautiful, labyrinthine path that started in Tadian and ended, ultimately, in Sagada. And I don't use the word labyrinthine loosely here: the ad hoc group led by Jon (composed of Pops, Kim, Jhoana, and Zaza) actually got lost on their way to the summit, although they did recover their bearings quickly enough to make it down to Sagada just in time.





It must be pointed out that until now, the Spanish Trail was something only a numbered few from the club could set foot on every year, since participants were usually invited to the climb through a hush-hush, elaborate method that required blood compacts, messages in Morse code, and Swahili. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, please don't kick me out of the club. They never had blood compacts or anything of the sort; the Spanish Trail was just an exclusive thing to which a select few were invited, probably because of their blood type or the unique size of their ears. Which is excellent, right? I'm going to shut up now.

At the camp kitchen with the gang.

With Jake on the second day.

Still, holy shit, what an awesome climb. The trail wasn't too difficult, and the view of the valley sprawling out beneath us was always so fucking gorgeous. We had a large number of guests from Ayala Land during that climb, and while they were having a grand time on the first day, the second day must have flayed them harder than they expected it to. Halfway through the trek, they'd begun chanting, "NO TO AMCI*! NO TO THE BMC**!"

Crossing a creek with Dindo, Camille, and Portia in the lead.

As is the usual shtick for our climbs, a lot of alcohol was eventually passed around after dinner, and nearly everybody seemed to be on a pivotal mission to keep their livers pickled in vodka or tequila. I brought my own bottle of rum with me, plus lots of Coke, and had gotten so plastered that I apparently ended up drunk-dialing Jose and telling him that it would've hic! been sho much BEDERR if he were with me on the mountain. Other crimes committed that night will not be named.

The drinking got worse when we finally arrived in Sagada. Or at least, the drinking got worse for me, since I was slugging it all back like a fiend and taking every shot as though there were no tomorrow. I woke up the next morning to horrifying stories of my stunts, which included:

1. Punching two guys: one on the shoulder and the other on the chin,
2. Peeing without compunction on the terrace, for everyone to see,
3. Getting into a vicious wrestling match with one of the guests,
4. Kissing everyone on the cheek (must've been left over from Kibungan),
5. Bullying one of the older members and locking him up in the bathroom,
6. Crawling around on all fours,
7. Being a general drunken pain in the ass.

Passing out at St. Joseph's Inn with a kitty sleeping on my belly.

Once again, other crimes committed will not be named.


Five:
Jose finally came back from Hong Kong, putting a stop to a host of bizarre eclipses and natural disasters that had been plaguing the earth for billions of years. And to think that Jose is made of blood and gristle and skin and bone, just like you and me! The man is a taproot of miracles of all reckoning.

Thank god you're back. A thousand assaultive kisses to you, my love.

Six:
The new color scheme sucks and so do you.



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*AMCI Mountaineering Club, Inc.
**Basic Mountaineering Course