A light when all other lights go out!

my sister's birthday. happy birthday!

march. 22. 2012. The best moment of my day happened in the bath that day. I was opening my bottle of body wash and it spewed forth and upwards a lovely spray of tiny, rainbow-swirled bubbles. I was alone but I smiled to myself at this unexpected bouquet. Then, I puckered my lips and blew a wispy thread of a wind towards it, sending the bubbles scattering; some popped. I knew then what just happened. It was The Best. Moment. Of. My. Day. Lala was right. Even if nothing much ever really happens in your day, there is still much to write about. Like the houses you pass by. The trees. A walk you took. Missing your station while on the MRT. Stuff. The pretty little details of life. Pretty little tiny bubbles. They’re the best thing.

“Knock ‘em dead with the first sentence.” This is one such advice given to writers. For some reason, I think that this was one of those writing advices that I hadn’t really needed to be spelled out for me as a mark of great writing. It was something that I felt I came to naturally, from all my reading. I learned that there were great sentences that pull you in immediately and I knew them when I read them. Writers for The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, I have frequently noticed, write really great pieces and really great opening sentences. It never ceases to amaze me and rouse my admiration. “Wow, that was a great sentence!” Inwardly, I admired the craft. I borrowed the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman from Lala ages ago and have yet to return it since. That’s because it took me an awful long time to get around to reading it. (This was because I had watched the movie first before Lala decided to lend me the book. Don’t I have amazing friends? Though I just say that so that she’ll

I was supposed to write several things and many things but now I found that I didn't write any and am too sleepy to think and write them. Sigh.

You know how you're talking with someone, and your conversation starts somewhere but branches off to somewhere else, like how conversations really go naturally? Well, I was talking to Clyde and saying something like, let's make our lives happen na Clyde! Because I was explaining work and my options to her and something...and Clyde said that the reason she was staying at her job even though it was gubot (chaotic) was that she found it perfect for her. She was going, it's so gubot, Cor! You know, their way of doing things. Cory: Maybe it's because they're a young company, Clyde. Clyde: Well, 5 years isn't young. Do you know what a systems analyst is? Cory: No. Clyde: They analyze the system. Cory: Thank you, Clyde. I was very edified. (Hehe) (laughter) Clyde: Well, you know, systems analysts look at what can be changed about the system to make it more efficient. Hmmm...what are the things at work that I would change ha...Let me think.... (blah blah blah blah) 

because we all need a bit of reminding sometimes... :)

I first heard of the Tyler Clementi suicide almost two years ago. He had been a freshman at Rutgers University when he was caught on video having sex with another man and he subsequently committed suicide over it. A case against the person who initiated the video recording ensued, and I am writing about this now because I have just come across news of the court verdict: the person responsible, Dharun Ravi, Tyler Clementi’s roommate and fellow freshman at RU, is being sentenced to ten years imprisonment for 15 counts of sentenceable behavior, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. I told Clyde and Anj about it. I sketched the situation a little and then I said, “It’s just that nasasayangan ako about it eh. Kasi the person (Dharun Ravi) was only 20 – ” “18 is the legal age, Cor,” Clyde said. “Yes, but…let me explain what happened. Tyler had requested Dharun for use of the room and then he brought a man over. Dharun said yes, but he was agitated. He was like, what does he n

The best bookmarks are those given by friends. Thankies! :)

I'm reading at the same time right now Alexander McCall Smith's Tea Time For The Traditionally Built and Little Women (Louisa May Alcott). I was at the table, and Clyde was on her laptop, googling George Eliot's Middlemarch. Clyde: Did you know that George Eliot was a girl? Cory: George Eliot was a girl?! Clyde: Haha! You didn't know! I got that from One True Thing (Anna Quindlen). They were talking about it in the book. George Eliot is a pseudonym. Cory: Did you know that Evelyn Waugh is a girl? Clyde: Well, of course! Cory: Haha! (Gotcha that time!) Evelyn Waugh is a boy! Clyde: I knew there was something wrong with that sentence. Note: Evelyn Waugh, author of Brideshead Revisited, is actually deceased already. The use of the present tense linking verb "is" is just reflective of normal casual conversation where inaccuracies are just permissively made. I think I got that information about Evelyn Waugh from Mimi, but it is also referenced in the movie Lost In

For Lala and Allison - seeing you guys were all i needed for my week to be complete. For Lalie - all i needed was just a hug to my best friend. Hmm, mmm. (She doesn't hug me kasi.) For my brother - happy birthday!

Part II Anyway, as I was saying, probably one of the important things that I got from the call center experience was a sense of the character profile of the people who go into it. This is significant for me because I find them to be different from me. I find that there’s this difference in mental and emotional make-up, attitudes and values, and hopes and aspirations in life. I feel like for most of my life I had only associated with a certain kind of people, the kind who belonged to the same more or less homogeneous mix as I did. I thought I was learning all about the world when I was in college, but maybe I wasn’t really. I did interact with many kinds of different people while I was at college. We had research papers and field studies – lots of them. But I realize I was only interacting with them for academic purposes and reasons, and somehow it didn’t yield enough insight. Maybe it was because I was interacting with them from the other side of the fence, not from their side, so I d

Part I There is a part in the job interview process where I am asked about my employment history. They ask me, what was the most important thing that you learned from [insert last job company]? My last job company was a call center, purported to be one of the best in the bpo industry, and my answer to the question was as follows: What I derived from the experience was an understanding of the bpo industry and its particular niche in our society. I had always heard about how this industry was booming, and how it was important to the economy of the Philippines, and how it was attracting a large pool of young professionals. I was curious as to what it was all about. And so, my knowledge of it in the abstract translated into the concrete when I went into the call center industry. I learned about the dynamics of the job and I learned about people – different kinds of people, especially the kind who walk into the call center business. That was basically the gist of my answer, of which I am a

Sometimes, I feel like I don't have the heart to face my problems. Just venting. :)