Alan's Split Personality

Love Team: Love Letters from a Broken World by Alan Navarra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Forgive me for telling this, but I believe Love Team was made to relive some of the author's vibes and his immersion in the underground indie life in Makati; way back when B-side collective was alive (and kicking) with Pinoy grunge and fliptop battles, way back before I Belong To The Zoo gets the GenZ with hugot songs, way back before Never Not Love You got glorified with a different diaspora trope. You have a feeling that he knows he isn't the teenage trashtalker in Girl Trouble anymore, because the edgy-ness and passion of the youth slowly dissipated in creating other works like Dumot, Sacada, and Lord Pls. I have a feeling that somehow, he wants to bring out that same angst and emo-phase again, although this time around, with a mature tone of a ripped-jean millenial — thirty(+something), flirty, and still surviving.

I have been there. B-side. Before Alphaland grabbed that little community and patch of land in Malugay and attempt to build a condo floating in Makati flood brought about by the poor drainage system (and high proximity to Pasig River). I felt the vibe of indie scenes, way back before Autotelic was offered by Warner Music, way back before Loonie became petite-famous in fliptop with his Tao Lang single. I also went bar-hopping: Saguijo, 20-20 (or XX/XX, depending on your social class at that night), and as far as 19-East and other mala-Gerry's grill in Alabang. And somehow, these moments, together with the reels and memes in @shoppinglibertad, encapsulates the gritty and grimy freelancing life of Jackson de Jesus and his Trashbox Confessional.

When I started reading the excerpts in his social media account @shoppinglibertad, it feels like a soft-launch of sorts. He wants to bring back the old glory days of Sev's café and the wonders of Words Anonymous, way back before Juan Miguel Severo got cancelled on twitter. Ngl, there are really lull and meh moments, and I don't know if this is intentional, especially on the second part of the book when he was doing a podcast with that girl who seemed to be typecasted as an INFP with septum earings, purple-streak on her bangs and cat's eye style of make up. Some of the spoken word seem to be a dull work, or maybe you get bored because you were really focused on the subliminal banters between the exes rather than the content of his poetry (of Jackson's or Alan's, whoever you were thinking while reading it).

In totality, Alan never ceased to circle back to the main thesis of his works: Kung paano ang bawat manlilikha ay nagpapakaalipin sa sistemang nagagawa ng pera.

Sir Alan, personal message po: (view spoiler)[I hope you wouldn't mind me rendering a sound prod from this book. No definite plans yet, but I can do like what I did in Lord Pls. Actually, this maybe more of an FYI rather than asking for consent huhu idk bahala na kung may oras ako to create this 2023 ehe (hide spoiler)]

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#NeverForgetti a Core Memory

Putting this here as my creative scratchpaper, to be included in one of the Loony Conversations with the Midnight Therapist:

Offer Letter to JAL, CPA

 Dear J—,

Thank you for accommodating me.

When we were starting talking online, I used to think of our younger years, on how we might have crossed our paths albeit not mindfully, or maybe you might have seen each other in one of the long queues of cashier, or maybe I saw your name in the Dean's Office or you maybe saw my name in the JPIA office. Oh how young and driven we were! That world is so small and so simple, we just manage our grades and, in your case, your scholarship allowances.

Sixteen years down the lane, we see ourselves still managing — our careers, our families, our personal crises, and our mental health. If you add that with our daily engagement with the social media and online traffic, we forget to look at spaces five inches beyond the handhold phones.

Now that we have traversed the threshold of authenticating our connection from our handheld to our senses, I see you as one of my go-tos whenever I might need something in SG. I'm sorry for being overbearing at times, but I offer something in return — something practical and itemized to navigate the asinine corporate world. We may be these #chikitingpatrolSG ants in a capitalist society, but if we learn how to go around the system with our sanities intact, I think we can keep this connection (and perhaps, a closer friendship) as we grow more mature and more thriving.

Never gonna lie, I did feel sad that the plan A (we do the dating gig) did not work, but this plan B is glaringly more feasible than before. Perhaps you see this as transactional; pareho na tayong pagod maging accountant. Pero dito at dito talaga tayo bumabalik, sa pagtutuos. I intend to keep our connection / friendship / transaction in any way that I can. But if I really see someone, and the deepest romantic wishes of my heart has been found, it is in your hands to either continue or terminate this contract.

If you wish to stop this connection, pray tell. I am scarred with ghosting. Hindi ko na alam paano ima-manage ang pagkawala ng mga nasa paligid ko, mapa-online o offline. If you wish to detach and set boundaries, let me know. I do respect you not only as a friend, but also as a peer, and kapwa manggagawang-uri.

Muli't muli, maraming salamat sa ganitong pagkakataon.

The banker gamer,

Ella

Diaspora sa Singapura

Majulah, Singapura. 

March on, Singapore. You were a port of tea before, then you became "The Asia layover", and now, you were an option for my forevermore.

That is, until you crush me with the difficulty of taking investment bankers in and paying New York-ish rent, plus the fact that what we are is a legally-permitted ant. An ASEAN worker who has no right to invest in your reclaimed lands. This is what I learned upon checking-in with a guy I met in an instagram meme, as he was looking for a fund manager (and all the while I thought he was looking for a corporate-type, alas, he needs a freelancer).

Upon arriving in Singapura and seeing that vortex waterfall of recycled chlorine in colored LED, I ask myself again, "Why do I go here? What is your plan? Is you plan to meet him? And then what? Are you proposing something in mind? Something in kind? Just something...?"

I guess I went to meet him not only because of me exploring this as a setting of my personal rendition of "brain-drain" tropes, or maybe it's not only because of me being left out by the siblings who went halfway across the world just to explore a better healthcare and greater chance of saving money, but also because I was imagining a vision of us together, renting a bedsit in the OG HDB Estate teeming with Singapura storylines of struggle, strife, and finally, thrive.

That is, when he mentioned in passing that he isn't really looking for a partner at a moment. Or maybe in the near future. Or maybe, in forever. He won't look, period. Ganern. Disappointed, but kind of expected. After all, we are too busy assessing if we really are in a thriving place — if our current careers are okay, or if our savings are intact... Or in my case, if I can afford to go to TWG and have a jasmine tea whenever I wish to rant about this foolish situation of the world. (The Climate change commission estimated an ealier end btw, way earlier than our projected first run of the Manila subway project in 2078).

We are too busy to heal, to dream, to grind separately. After all, we just met in a meme.

"Tell me where you are right now, no kidding." was that meme. I was in my office cafeteria, blindly taking a snapshot of the false greenery of the pantry, introspecting how corporate that is— green sofas, like the old plants uprooted in BGC, to give way to our payable carparks, and limited slots for driving employees. A shout of "Slot is full!" for every time an FTE wishes to avail a free parking in the night. Alas, most of us work at night.

The meme went and so our conversations ensued. From August 2022 to moments of crisis and anxieties of earning, progressing with careers, to emotional emergencies of breaking up and how to deal and how to heal, and scheduled breakdowns, to net worths, grit of the grind, IG stories and madam bebi branding. Until Lazada 12.12 sale offered an ad about flying again. After all, it has been two years since my last scheduled flight and subsequently cancelled because of Covid.

We took our conversation outside the usual platform, and I find ourselves that in moments of silence, we still stick to the noise. Rather than dropping the phone and look at each other, we hover our eyes to the blue lights and its radiation; I don't even know now if too much can cause an eye cancer. Brain-drain, I guess. The mental health kind, not the economic diaspora kind.

And so I mull again on this diaspora idea and he was saying that I should stick to this current gig as it gives me what I need without moving out of the comfort zone. And I felt antsy again, because that sentiment came from a thriving man who went all the way to uproot himself and remove from the anxiety of being the great breadwinner. An anxiety that I keep on managing, as long as I stay in my family home. I still stay, because I was too busy and too tired to deal with the paperwork of applying renovations and seeing to it that every design fitted the japandi aesthetic. The design was there, the paperwork wasn't. It still wasn't. Just like the doctor who was emotionally absent from the time he became physically absent from Manila. He doesn't deserve to be included in my treasure trove of dating fails, but I guess he really is a dating fail. He set the benchmark of the profiles too high, but he crushed the vision bar too low, it became six feet under.

I don't even know if there is still a single soltero with a PRC license, a crossover with automatic transmission, and a net worth of at least Php5 million (financial notes came from that auditor, not from this banker). That, plus a desire of not having a kid. Will I ever find that in Manila? I mean, most of these men are (1) not hitting the profile, or (2) desiring to make a child, or (3) that doctor: a single father. Wala bang (4) none of the above? I mean, I am still optimistic, but if the market is so limited in Manila, perhaps I can start looking for one in Singapura...?

So we circle back to this Majulah Singapura, together with my unique #chikitingpatrolSG hashtag and ubiquitous learning about content-creation and noise-cancellation. Back to the re-imagining the vision, or perhaps time to learn algorithms and python?

Let's see.

A Forest of APA Citations and Footnotes

When the World Ended I Was Thinking about the Forest by Glenn Diaz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 Stars. That half-star deduction is me finding this very small book to be a difficult read, with citations and all. Glenn knows my inputs about this red book, as it somehow traverses in my social media stories and hormonal tweets, and yet, he still doesn't answer one of my questions in mind. Haha.

I'll need to jot down my sentiments first before write a review, because I have so many things in my plate at the moment; I wasn't supposedly think too much (as I need to prepare myself for an ASEAN travel).

Pagbalik ko na lang siguro.

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