I woke up with Martin, and he held me close and whispered some quiet and important things before he pushed off to work. I went to help my family move into a new condo. I didn't like the condo, and I didn't want to unpack because I knew I'd be moving out again, by myself, in a month. Meg and her family had moved in next door, and she was busy unpacking with her mom.
I went to hang out with Pol and Petra and I think Camille was there also. Pol handed me a crumpled sheet of pad paper and challenged me to make up a story using his characters. He liked the story so much and asked me if I wanted to take a walk or grab some coffee or something. I said, Sure, I'm walking to [garbled, but definitely a part of the city, somewhere in old Manila or Quiapo] for my class, anyway. Beats me what class it was, exactly. Spanish, I think.
So Pol and I walked down some street. Above us looped and crisscrossed different highways (we were walking through somewhere that looked a lot like that park underneath the flyover, near Magallanes Station). Also above was a rope and wire bridge, and people were crowding on it, in line for the MRT. Gella was in that line; she leaned over the rope and called out to us and gave me a very shocked look, and I said, I'm walking with Pol to my class! See you!
Then Pol ducked into a shop or a shanty or some other old building and asked, Can you give me a hand with these cows? I'm supposed to bring them. He was pulling on the lead around the neck of one cow, and there were two others. All of them were white with short horns and baggy skin and sleepy eyes. I got one, and we walked while dragging them (they were very slow and heavy and stubborn) behind us and laughing and joking.
At one point, one of my shoes fell off (it was blue), and I kicked it around, and my cow sniffed after it like a droopy dog. They like feet, Pol said about the cows. He told me about a restaurant nearby where I should take Martin sometime.
We were pulling those cows down some Quiapo-looking street, with vendors on all sides and old round lanterns and fishy smells and dried mud on the streets and tricycles going by. It was very pretty to look at.
We had fun that afternoon, but it took so long to get the cows to where Pol had to get them that I missed my class. I didn't mind. I said goodbye to Pol and the cows and went home to my family's new condo.
When I got there, I saw how nice the closet in my room was (it had bright red doors, newly painted), and I realized it had been a while since I'd had a closet that big, so I decided to unpack everything. Then I went to the sala where my family was watching cartoons and eating popcorn. And Martin came over and watched with us. Everyone was happy and laughing.
The End.
Hundreds of wallets were planted on the streets of Edinburgh by psychologists nearly half of the 240 wallets were posted Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, and his team inserted one of four photographs When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send The baby photograph wallets had the highest return rate, with 88 per cent of |
And then you're sitting alone in your shoebox apartment, watching the local news while chewing on leftover liempo and wondering what your loved ones far away are up to, and the anchor tells you that bombs are going off in Mindanao, and you're scared.
It's silly. You grew up in Mindanao. You heard these things all the time, scoffed at them, even. Hey, you even had a few brushes with them. The malls in your own city were bombed. Your junior prom had to change venues at the last minute because of a bomb-slash-kidnap threat. Ooh, one summer, foreigners in your village were airlifted to a safer place (a helicopter in the ballpark!), your family had duffel bags of clothes in the hall ready to grab, and the neighborhood installed a siren and ran evacuation drills. When nothing happened to you afterward, you laughed about it and remembered only the scrumptious arrozcaldo they served at the end of the drills.
But in Manila, watching it on the news, you get scared. Does that make you as detached and misinformed about the real situation in Mindanao as you thought Manileños were? Or is it because your own city forms a triangle with Davao and Cotabato Cities, both recently bombed? Is it because your mom drives to that city almost every day, and the rest of your family every week? Is it because you can actually see them in the car, with Dad at the wheel, and Mom putting on her shades, and Lola looking out the window, and Mon adjusting his earphones with his unclipped fingernails -- as if you were right beside them? Is it because, before you can finish a sentence that starts with, "What if -- " you hear the echo of a kaboom in the back of your mind?
(Hey, two of your best friends go to school in Davao.)
And then the papers this morning tell you, the military thinks Manila will be next. You're more inclined to believe that all this is just, as the President put it, "pre-SONA noises;" noises that perhaps her own men set off to lend her a flimsy film of credibility before she gives that big speech at the end of the month. But you can't help but wonder, what if -- (kaboom) -- they're right? What if they -- terrorists or our own military -- strike here?
And here is a business district. Here is a local megachurch. Here is sandwiched between two malls and on top of a tiangge. Here is your apartment, across one mall, close to a busy EDSA intersection, and between two other churches. Here is where you and the love of your life meet almost every single day, to steal an hour or two from desks, deadlines, and the scary news. I mean, what if -- (kaboom)?
You realize your life has changed because you suddenly care about other people. And suddenly, even if they're just a handful of people, they are quite the handful to care about. And apparently, with this kind of maturity comes a matching kind of paranoia.
You kind of can't help it. What if -- (kaboom)?
Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer
On June 4 her mother asked a hospice company to bring a wheelchair for Colby so she could visit a theater to see "Up." However, the weekend went by and the wheelchair was not delivered June 9, Colby could no longer be transported to a theater Pixar officials listened to Colby’s story and agreed to send someone to Colby’s house the next day with a DVD of "Up," “I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,”
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I am regular now. I enjoy it half the time but would gladly take a better one. What's a better one? One where I write more stuff and stuff that I like writing about. One where they train you to become better at what you do. (What I do is a little editing and a little web development, both things that I enjoy but only enjoy half as much when it's done at this desk.)
Friends
I had dinner with my Eliazo roommates last Friday, and it was really great. Gella suggests we do it once a month. Friends of 313 Eliazo are welcome to crash.
Edwin and I have been not-friends for about two-and-a-half months now. I still miss him.
One of my friends might be involved in a shady organization. Her mom says she won't come home and her reasoning's gotten weird. She's always been hard to contact, but now we're worried about her.
Family
Mikko's a junior now. Momon is in the seventh grade, and Mikko is only barely a head taller than him. Why I got the short genes, I'd like to know.
People are getting old or growing up, and it's kinda sad. But so far, no one's stopped loving anyone, so I guess it's all good. I miss them.
Boyfriend
Martin and I recently passed the three-month mark. I miss him, too, even if I'm going to see him in just another half hour. I miss him as soon as I hug him goodbye, even if I know I'm going to see him again for the rest of my life. We are serious. We are happy.
Look at that, only six minutes to go.
Apartment
I need a new mattress and more bookshelves. Trouble is, I'm strapped for cash, and the place is the size of a shoebox. :))
Writing
I have two short stories that want revision, about four that want writing down, and maybe two that want translating into scripts for comics. I'm also working on a long nonfiction thingy that I might self-release as a pdf with doodles. Finding time is the trouble.
Other creating stuff
I'm assembling my first handbound book, but it's still just on the floor of my apartment, and only half the pages have been cut and folded. I'm trying to think of a good redesign for the website I built for my thesis, because if I want to keep it on my resume, it has to look less embarrassing. I'm also supposed to make a short Father's Day AVP for the dads in the community back home. Again, finding time is the trouble.
In General
Chance of rain, but I have a nice and colorful umbrella. Being corny helps.
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But of course I don't leave enough. I |
To understand what is really going on in a colony of ants or bees, Dr. Dornhaus, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, tracks the little creatures individually — hence the paint and the numbers. studies of whether the efficiency of ant society, based on a division of labor among ant specialists, is important to their success briefly anesthetized 1,200 ants, one by one, and painted them using a single wire-size brush, with model airplane paint two video cameras aiming down on an insect-size stage, she analyzed 300 hours of videotape of the ants in action behavior more worthy of Aesop’s grasshopper than the proverbial industrious ants fast ants took one to five minutes to perform a task slow ants took more than an hour, and sometimes two about 50 percent of the other ants do not do any work at all small colonies may sometimes rely on a single hyperactive overachiever |
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His friend Steven Sharp Nelson is on the cello.
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