zane's posts with tag: trips
| Start: | Jan 7, '09 | | Location: | The Esplanade, Singapore |
Stars. in. neighboring. Singapore. Thank you, Jesus.
concert tickets... check!
plane tickets to singapore...check!
take me to the riot, torquil and co. :) going to singapore this january for one of my three-musical-acts-to-see-before-i-die -- Stars!!!
but wait, there's more! i'll be with two of my best ladies, pats and leica, swooning over a band that played an important role at important junctures in our lives. this is going to be excellent!
...and on the following day that we got the tickets, guess what? i heard that Swell Season (number two among the three) will be in Australia, South Korea and Japan early next year, too.
Dave Matthews Band (guess what spot they occupy on my list?) na lang, pwede na rin akong mamatay.
my inner idiot is grinning and giddy =D
 (blame Pats and Djong for this rambling ;p )It's a dream I've been nurturing since I started dutifully following Ian Wright's exploits on Lonely Planet. We are now in the year 2008, and that was back in 1998--10 years and still an unrequited love. You wouldn't think I've been harboring such notions just by looking at my grande Starbucks tea frappe and perfectly applied eyeliner. My friend Eric, whose now in Cambodia, laments the absence of the ubiquitous chain in his new home city, yet he makes me salivate by announcing that massage places litter the streets like 7-11s. I want to visit him in Cambodia, Pats in Singapore, dear Ryan in South Korea, Rony, Gerwin and Charlie in Singapore, life partner Louie, sexy Ems and Lifebunny in Hong Kong, Jon in Spain, Janne in Finland, Donna in the UK, Graeme in Scotland, Dwayne in Indiana, Yas in Dubai, maybe Emi in Romania, Essi wherever she is at the moment...During the bad in-betweeners of my life, I swung from blaming family and circumstances, to blaming myself--both in highly passionate ways that boggle the mind. Still, there is a shining nugget I managed to pick up--strength. Life's hell-bent ways gave me tree-trunk-like sea legs, and I want to keep using them.  Now that life is being quite kind and cushy to me, I can't help but look for the imbalance that only a churning ocean can provide. I long for the comfort that I've always found in constant change. Instead of expecting the unexpected, I don't expect at all. Deal me what cards you will, and with those, I'll play like a loony. I'll probably even wager (and lose) everything, yet find redemption in smiling like a drunken sailor. In life, I can strategize, plan and mind-f**k like the best of them. But I'd rather I didn't. I really would much prefer to be thrown somewhere and I'll be happy to learn how I'll deal with it. I can't imagine a purer heaven. Give me something and some things never to be defined. Give me the raucous, the sweaty and the revolting. Challenge me in ways that will make me rant and spit and give birth to strange, unwieldy energies. I have always believed that by traveling, my sea legs will find happiness. I want to talk to different and differing people, be forced to eat strange food, work for my breakfast...  You know what they say about potential? I can do it, therefore I must do it. Damn the comfort zone and its accompanying delusions. I am dying to have a taste of the biggest possible perspective by constantly being in motion. I want to see The Frames live in Ireland, Dave Matthews Band in Virginia and join the Burning Man community at least once. There are also fairy conventions in various part of this weird, wonderful world. Yes, I want to be there, too. Sometimes, I think I'm too old to start backpacking, Couchsurfing and going on trips that plenty of those half my age have probably already enjoyed. But I reckon I can always lie and say i'm only 27. Until when shall I keep to where the Starbucks stores are aplenty? Boom-de-ah-dah!
|  | With Pi and Aldwin :) non-highlight: had to buy Very Expensive shorts as my trusty blue ones finally gave up on me. Wala namang swim shorts na okay yung fit sa kin dun sa ukay-ukay sa plaza. deng. |
Link: http://www.wendmag.com/Advocacy + adventure
Need i say more?
For those whose sense of adventure go beyond personal learning
yes, gurgle not gargle...
* my mom's birthday tomorrow :) we're cooking things and such. i hope the titos and the titas come. that's all she wants.
* three quarters into Breaking Dawn is the wrong thing to read right now
* been thinking a lot about loyalty lately (oh heeey, how's that for alliteration? ;-) ). i realize i'm not the best person to rail against the disloyal, but some people really will disregard things for the sake of convenience. i wonder if anyone has ever DIED of inconvenience. the cancer in this society is more than just its politics. a great factor is laziness--the short cut, the band-aid, anything that will make it easier on you even if it's not right. kamote.
* what do you do when life presents so many shiny new things, but so very few changes?
* planning a surfing trip to good ol' LU next weekend (aug. 23 to 25). join na! i ranted some days ago re: not really liking my brain at the moment, like it doesn't know how to just be settled anymore. my thinking is getting increasingly frantic. i need to get away to clear my head. that particular beach always does it. i can't wait for the chance to just be able to concentrate on one beautiful objective :)
* bellydance has started again. diyosa jill is teaching us a tribal choreography now. wheee! sama na kayo dali! teacher by 40, teacher by 40, teacher by 40...
da, that's it.
| | 3 years' worth of favorite surfing pictures...just felt like reminiscing today :) |
(warning: drama mode)the truth is, i'm not particularly very good at it, but this thing that my friends introduced me to makes me feel like nothing else. i started surfing in 2005, before la union was as popular and crowded a destination as it is now, but still many years after my friends first got into it. i would probably be a third or even fourth generation model if surfers were marketed like ipods. generally, i'm pretty resilient but many, many, many things have really started beating on my armor. sometimes, i really do feel there's nothing left for me on this planet, except for trying to take care of my internal organs so someone can make use of them when i can't anymore. and in between seriously considering if i have mononucleosis or, well, that thing that will put you in the 7th circle of dante's hell, is the shining thought of paddling out towards the horizon. everytime i catch a wave, life feels completely peaceful. i don't have a care in the world but for the speed of the water that's carrying me, the wind on my face, and the shore that's coming up to greet me. then i paddle back out, raise my upper body with every wave i meet, and crash down on the water with the board as my protector. there's nothing more exhilarating than maneuvering myself in a current that's always changing and deserves the utmost respect. the perfect marriage of man and mother earth.  and when the city, with all its unnecessary trappings and misplaced priorities, stag gers me with a sense of profound futility, nothing jolts me awake quite like the thought of hopping on that bus and getting ready to greet the water. and i move on with a renewed sense of joy, looking forward to my next surfing trip. the mighty, mighty water and what it can do to and with you, that's something to worry about, not the rules that the modern world dictates. money, sex, beauty, social image, i don't really care. what would hefty savings and "name" mean if i went through this life an empty shell--cooing over my next gadget or fashion purchase, or worrying too much about money that i've forgotten the richer gift of loving? and when the story feels like it has gone on too long, has become too tiring, or is going around in circles, an ending seems the best solution. or i can just throw the book out. and once more, i retain my tenuous hold on the tether to life for just one more ride, or even just one more wipeout. the water--it keeps moving me along :) thanks, guys.
| | the good heart of client Greenwich and their endorser, the forever cute John Lloyd Cruz. to while away time, we imagined ourselves on the beach and played with the Aeta kids. |
| | The company takes its hardworking employees to Tagaytay Highlands for some bonding time through a friendly sports tourney :) feels good to sweat it out. i insist, though, that there should have been a Royal Rumble-type group wrestling activity... |
| | Hawaii was great fun, although i did have a minor accident involving a 20-storey plummet. Good thing the hotel administrators were very helpful. i was trying to pose for a panoramic shot when the wind blew me down, down, down from the 20+ floor to the 4th. Enrie, who was taking my picture, quickly ran down to see if i was alright. the door to the patio where i fell was locked, so she had to call the guard and ask for help to look for me. At first the guard couldn't understand what i looked like and then he found me, looked at Enrie, and said, "is this it?" lovely, hilarious moment :) i'll come back with my surfboard before i die =D |
| | A dream destination. Someday, I'll take Zane there, and maybe her friend Louie. They'll love the ashrams and the dancing :) |
| | on Baboy's way to India |
| | more surfing, although there was a competition this weeked. still, there were enough waves for everyone to play with =) you know how it goes... |
| | a day in Subic with fellow fans (officemates) who all volunteered for the love of Neil Gaiman. quite tiring, but worth every minute. |
...for getting me hooked on Neil Gaiman. As a wet-behind-the-ears froshie (redundant ba yon?) in 1996, i learned that literature could surpass "great" and truly, truly expand one's world when wanggo dropped a copy of Brief Lives on my lap and told me to read it. and i did in one night. there's no way to describe that first encounter but it was like eating chocolate for the first time, or waking up from The Matrix. during the rest of my college years, i kept borrowing more and more (thanks, kaoko cow!). then wanggo loaned me neverwhere. until now, i thank the god/s/goddess/es for the world that these two showed me. i became, like the rest of the world's current reading population, a card-carrying Gaiman geek. fast-forward to The Year That Was Was (2005), Neil came to the country. and months before, 99% of the people in my circle were all abuzz. i chastised a friend of mine for wanting to get to the first event by 7am, and i wound up being there at 6:30am, 7th in line. the line went on for days and Neil came in like a rockstar--all tall, a little fuzzy, and British. what ensued was a "wall of sound" that Neil fondly recalled in his blog. in those three days, i was able to get four books signed-A Game of You, Neverwhere, Coraline, Smoke and Mirrors, and a hug from my literary idol. and though he probably signed it a million times, i felt that his "Zane, Mind the Gap --n.g." on my battered and slightly embarrassing copy of Neverwhere was special. i did mind the gap that year (but that's another story).
imagine my excitement upon learning that the office was helping Fully Booked organize a special NG book-signing and talk for the ad congress delegates. my boss, donna, dropped by to ask for volunteers from the creatives, but it was like we were all waiting for a sign. then she said we can have our books signed and five hands promptly shot up in the air. by saturday, my The Wake, Mr. Punch, Smoke and Mirrors (i gave the last one to a friend), Good Omens, and Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire (with an N.G. foreword) were signed. he read the first chapter of the book he's currently writing entitled (so far) The Graveyard. it sounded very interesting. one of the fans asked if he would ever write more erotica in the future, and neil said it always embarrasses him to write that kind of literature. it takes him two years to finish one story, because there are points where he'd be really embarrassed and he has to stop until the embarrasment goes away, and that's when he'll start writing it again. he also joked that unlike children's lit, which he loves writing because it can be enjoyed by one's kids and families for a long time, erotica is something he hopes doesn't get published until his whole family is gone. he's so damn amusing. he also said "fantasy is a marvelous tool for making things in real life solid" (or something like that.) AND helped someone make the coolest proposal EVER (my boss told us about this in advance. i was surprised to see that the girl was someone i knew). neil is wonderment. i finally got that infamous "Burn this book --n.g." =) thanks, man.
| | Super Baboy flies to two dream destinations--Ireland and Italy! Got to see Turkey, too, all courtesy of Tita Pi! Thank you po :) |
| | Food client's commercial shoot took me to an interesting place that would make a nice venue for an intimate low-key wedding with a rustic feel. |
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