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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A Moment of Gold

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it’s about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted. Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city.

Unlike Olivia Laing, I live in one of the Enlisted Men's Barrios of Makati. I walk everyday to-and-fro my workplace: #TheBank situated in one of the towers of Bonifacio Global City (BGC).

I wish to digress about my ways of opening connections via online and offline, and how I do this while traversing the most gentrified business district of Manila as of late, and how expensively insulated this concrete community is. I wish to give a warning about this SG-citylike sans the efficient commute, and how this concrete jungle is not only filled with deafened dreams, but also filled with realizations and ruminations of my healing heart with bits of profanities whilst walking and having loony conversations with my midnight therapist, memes and IG reels combined.

BGC isn't exactly like New York. There maybe rats, but they are lurking outside the district, resurfacing in the EMBOs around it. BGC is filled with working class who do not get to enjoy themselves at their breaktimes, thanks to the expensive bistros and limited benches and greenery. There's also no library, so if I wish to read, you have to locate a gentrified space and pray that there will be no rain for the day. This concrete jungle adds to the loneliness we feel as inhabitants of it. Together with the expounding rise of sibuyas and bigas, it aggravates our need to be in a community of affordable living, or at least a collective ground to air our grievances.

In my Saturday self-care regimes I do walk the city in an introspecting pace, lurking the side streets, people watching. Sometimes, breathing the vibe of stillness in the empty spaces. In a way, I see the street art in its walls, simply being there, or maybe waiting. Just like Olivia mentioning about the gloomy character of NYC, she explains how people cope via their creations. She mentioned Edward Hooper, Andy Warhol, and, in a vast majority, David Wojnarowicz and his activism through the AIDS epidemic. And through these people who breathed loneliness bring a hope to cope, or maybe an opium of attention, for us to know ourselves more, and finally, to give courage to start a connection.

Last Chinese New Year eve, I was looking for a vacant bench to eat my salad and read some more and after a long walk of getting out of a congested High Street, there's a newly-filled community of expatriates who live in a posh two (or three?) bedroom condo complex. One Meridien Tower houses expats with their little kids, some AFAMs and their wives, and mostly caters bistros filled with working-class Filipinos in bikes, grab food, and what-have-you. All benches are filled, except for one who is occupied by a tired man blankly staring the newly-opened store in gold.

I said hi to him and seated across him, and we had conversations about livelihood, reading, writing, and him being on his precious break time. At first I was annoyed; he keeps accommodating me even though all I wanted was to eat and read. And then after that small talk and me eating in the next 10minutes, I looked back at him and he was stealing sleep.

He was talking to me because he was battling the antok. And I was looking at the newly-opened store, testing the density of the instagrammers, the kids ranting about May wifi po ba kuya?, and the Titas of Manila drinking spanish wine with their amigas. I looked at him feeling the pity, and when he opened his eyes he jolted at me and sheepishly said sorry for I was caught looking at him. Told him that I know the feeling, for we are the same. We are both part of the working class in the concrete jungle — I was just five floors higher. #TheBank

More of Q-and-A here-and-there, and before he stepped out of the bench, he gave me the store's sample chocolate — the one with the 42%. I said my thanks, but as part of my overthinking spree, I was wondering if he has read Douglas Adams, or if he's into high fantasy books when he jested "You know that 42 is the answer to everything."

I know, I read Hitchiker's Guide.

Be it his way to reconnect or not (in the future), I kind of understand Olivia's excerpt when she wrote "Sometimes, all you need is a PERMISSION TO FEEL."

Maybe with all these problematic things in our lives, all we need is to feel... To finally heal.

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2023 Reading Spree

This year, I am going back to basics loljk 

I'll put whatever I have in mind at this moment: 

• A doorstopper, something that has 500 pages at least in the Trade paperback edition. Two doorstoppers are so fulfilling!!! Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See is finally done, and Olivia Laing's The Lonely City is also done and notated. Time to grab the Hanya Yanagihara book about NYC and #laslasreads 
• A highly-marketed contemporary fiction, like Crying in H Mart, or Malibu Rising. Any that has "NYTimes bestseller" up on its sleeve. 
• A pocketbook — Wattpad, Popfic, Precious Hearts, What have you got, as long as lower than 300pages. Ella to locate an old Penguin classic on the old vault of old books lols Scifi rosters especially those stories that were recently found in Clarkesworld Magazine back-issues. That was an amazing treasure grove of good works. If I can, I will try Asimov. BUT DO NOT EXPECT. 
• Essay and/or Creative Nonfiction compilations. Because I want to go back to writing again. And as I see myself, I have my bread-and-butter calisthenics on recording flash-fiction-esque memories. So I want to do CNF and submit a work again somewhere.
• LOCAL READS — andami ko nang Pinoy-authored books na hindi ko pa nababasa huhuz. Like Bibliolepsy, Yñiga, and even the newly purchased Love Team (I have to ask Alan again if I can sound-produce an excerpt in my #Pahinahan) 

No pressure but I will try my best at: 

• Post-Modern work like House of Leaves by Danielewski. It has a cult following, pero natatakot aoo basahin sa gabi. Please, give me courage and strength. 
• Horror or Surreal works of Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk. HOMAYGAHD AM I SERIOUS WITH THIS THOUGH OMG I DUNNO I — fine, YOLO. 
• ONLY ONE Self-help/Leadership/Management-related book. I cannot afford to splurge Php1,000 just to trash it away after one session of fast-read. So if you love me or love the nature at least, I'd appreciate if you can give me a discounted copy, a bootleg, or a kindle version of it. I NEED RECOMMENDATIONS!

Magazine-ful of Scifi

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 121 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recently found this online magazine with a full roster of scifi when I was looking for a short story that got featured in Netflix's Love, Death and Robots.

This particular issue tackled about the dangers of AI — and how it touches / lives side-by-side with humanity. I've only read two short stories on this issue, and both houses the themes of us people communicating with these artificial intelligence that we use not only to create bots or automation skills, but also as to how they converse to us in creative ways like letters and poetry.

The other work I read, titled Everyone from Themis Sends Letters Home is a cautionary tale of people traversing an otherworldly terrain, with no beginning or end, no protagonist and no drama. And somehow, there's no scientific documentation about their study, only letters. Little do you know that the very same characters you have seen at the beginning are somewhat AI-generated codes that was a big contributor in a grander landscape. Or scheme, if you tell me.

I am not much a very fan of Scifi that circles around on hard science, so forgive me for a messy book review of sorts. But if it helps, I'd rather recommend other issues of the Magazine as you venture into the adventures that are beyond the contemporary fiction and sagas and what have you.

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#HelloMumbai and #EdinTrio Tales

I Take This Train Too by Cyrus Daruwala
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was October 2016 when the #EdinTrio embarked on a journey to Mumbai because of a business need to move our operations and cross-train new processes — you know, the usual Corporate-ops-saving-mechanisms. It was also at this year when the most controversial announcement by PM Modi declared that all of the 500 and 1000 Rupees that we hold are deemed worthless, and we only have three banking days to change them in the newly-released 2,000 Rupees so that we can use them in the city. All of my backpacking plans got scratched that day. Taj Mahal, Jaipur... Heck, even Ladakh hike went down the drain. I was stuck in the city, getting overtimes, getting more stressed, unable to get the holiday we really wished to take. The only consolation was us being stuck in JW Marriott hotel in Juhu, where we pray our Corporate cards to all of India's gods and deities, making sure that we were able to settle all of the expenses every 10days.

Since Juhu is known for its long strip of beach with pistons flattening the sand for cricket games and dog strolls, it is also a good walking ground going to Granth Bookstore — a Mumbaikar version of Fully-Booked mothership here in BGC, Taguig. After 30minutes of introspection, you exit the Juhu Gate1 and you shall see the cool aesthetics of the bookshop. This is were I was able to buy this first edition book, hard-bound, with sleeve, for only 575 Rupees.

The book is about the people inside the train — one of their massive transports in the whole Maharashtra state. A train is a microcosm of society, like our Jeepneys, UV Express and buses, and somehow the book identified the demographic of Mumbaikar riders, or in my case, riders from Bandra Station to Churchgate (during my stay). One funny thing when we travelled to town (Colaba, South Bombay for context) is that we didn't know that there is a special section in a compartment for first-class. And even though it has the same poor ventilation, it costed us 10 times the fare. The 10 rupees went to 100, all because I wanted a seat far from the congested section. Good thing that I wasn't carrying a 2000 note, or the train conductor might gave me the deadly stare and take the money away, not knowing when will I receive the change... Or if will I ever receive the change.

The author apologizes for the lesser representation of women in his illustrations. But somehow, that reflects really what was happening in Mumbai at the time of my visit: women have the lesser representation compared to the men. In the office alone, the team where I taught the process has only two women tallying the 13 full-time employee roster. And these two wonderful women are both married. But heck, I am the only one in that floor wearing a Mac Ruby Woo lipstick and code switches to American english.

In the women section of the train I also encountered a fish vendor, and a snack vendor, and they used to sit near the edge of the train while trying to sell their goods. Some of my colleagues who aren't used to the sight felt awkward and icky. I wasn't — I used to ride the Phil Natl Railways home-along-da-riles version in my college years. So somehow, I resonated with the author's experiences in riding the mass public transport.

I only hope that the author included the sketch of Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as the centerfold. That way, his book will capture the foreigner's allure. I mean, who won't be mesmerized with the Unesco Heritage site? I even crossed the highway to grab an instagram shot of it. What a grandiose piece of architecture, and I immortalized it by writing a short story using my nome-de-plume.

Overall, the book somehow documented my little experience of Bombay and its massive rail. Coupled it with funny illustrations and quirky commentaries and nuances, this is a goodread to cap off this year.

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A Goodread = Good Cry

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Oo, para responsibility mo na kung may mangyari man saken. Hehehe"

"At least one time in your life ma-experience mo maiwan sa ere. Lol"

Seemingly harmless, right?
In the first one, it triggered a bitter memory. The second, triggered a trauma in me. In the same manner these conversations elicited a feeling out of the ordinary, the novel uncovered some when I was reading the first half of it while crying in an empty park in BGC.

I wasn't the eldest (view spoiler)[I was 2nd in the sibling line, but the eldest daughter (hide spoiler)] like Nath, not even a middle child like Lydia. I wasn't a kid who was being ignored, or a kid who followed every parent's order. Perhaps, I saw myself as Hannah, (even though I wasn't the youngest) who listened and observed and took every little detail and commited to memory. I even remembered myself hugging my knees under the table when a quarrel happened.

Reading Celeste Ng's novel uncovered some of these traumas I have had faced in my younger years. It's really a wonder how was I able to clearly emphatize in the unwritten rules, forgetful encounters, and broiling angst and rage happening in a dysfunctional family. This may be an outtake for some of my relatives, but they never realized this: my family's intact on the outside, but really, a broken and dysfunctional within. I don't want to elaborate since Celeste doesn't own my personal plotline, but somehow, reading her prose resurfaced the bitter memories of us siblings growing up.

Now that we are healing on our own, I am grateful that through this novel, a self-awareness has been replenished. And in a way, a helpful tool for me to introspect and how to react on some of the candid conversations that seems to be ordinary, but triggered another lifetime and another story.

Thanks to Lynai for recommending this book. She did me a good deal of dealing with a personal breakdown and addressing grief over a scheduled holiday. Lynai you did give me a goodread and a good cry.

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