10 Things I Like About Me

Right.

This whole thing started when my friend Kat (who is a real natural talent at drawing and writing) challenged me to write a list of things that I like about myself. No, scratch that. This whole thing started when I asked her if she could make a list of things she liked about herself as easily as she could list down the things she disliked about herself. She then responded with a challenge, to which I responded internally with "oh no. crap."

So that is the story of the 10 Things I Like About Me challenge. It's a little weird for me to be doing this but my friends Jaja and Gene already posted theirs so I'm feeling the pressure. Anyway, no more stalling. Here is my list of things that I like about myself.

I see things in a different way. 

Over the years I've learned to look at things from different perspectives as a way to rationalize my way through my emotions or thoughts. I suppose it's also a way for me to understand where a person is coming from emotionally or mentally. It's something that might have been natural with me, but it definitely developed as I grew up. 

I love beautiful things.
I like art. Even though I am completely without any artistic talents, I love to look and appreciate art. Take me to a big ass Acacia tree with branches that reach out to the clouds and I'd love it. Show me an artistic talent that you can do and I'd admire you. I love beautiful things and I see beauty everywhere.

Most of the time, if we talk, I'll find something interesting about you.

Even though I am not the most social of creatures, and I hardly make the first move to socialize in a party, I am a pretty okay conversationalist. I listen well and I try my best to know more about what interests a person regardless of whether or not I have anything to contribute. In my mind, that's just another opportunity to learn something new. 

I'm ways away from who I was.
I like that I learned a lot of things about myself the past few years. Knowing those things have made me more sensitive and understanding as compared to the past. Also, in the process of growing up I learned how to give more importance to some things and less importance to other things. 

I am pragmatically competent.

Stealing this from Gene. I have a mental radar that goes off when things are off (or on) between people. I'll attribute this to all those lessons on stylistics, semantics and pragmatics.

I want to see the world.
I have a list of countries that I would love to to go to and I watch travel shows regularly. Everytime I watch a movie that features a country, I imagine myself being there and soaking up the culture, the activities, the food, and the people. I want to see the world and come back home with a bag full of stories.

I like learning new things.
Not necessarily academic things, mind you. I am a student of life and I like that I am able to learn about different things from experience and from different people. Years ago, someone taught me to fly a kite. In college, I learned how to skin dive. One summer, I took a jazz dance class just because. To be honest, I haven't learned a lot compared to other, more adventurous people, but I have a list of things that I'd like to try and learn (even if it's just in theory). 

I am trustworthy.
If you tell me not to tell anyone your secret, I literally won't tell anyone. That's the Isa guarantee. Unless, of course, not spilling the beans could prove harmful to you and/or other people. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet.

I am musically inclined.
I love that I am able to lose myself in a good song. I like to sing and I'd love to be able to master an instrument enough that I can play a good number of songs at a drop of a hat. Right now I'm working to be a ukulele player (after more than 5 years of owning one!).

I grew up away from the city.
I like that I grew up where I grew up. My dad told me that when he and my mom were starting a family they made a conscious choice to live in a province instead of in the city. I don't really know why they did that but I appreciate it because I got to grow up among trees and fresh air instead of concrete buildings and smoke. I think that growing up away from the city also molded me in so many different ways. I can't imagine how I'd be if I grew up as a city girl.

There you go! It took me a long time to get this done (a fact that might actually say more about me than this whole list) but I did it!

Whoever you are reading this blog post, I challenge you to do this list as well. It was tough but it's a good exercise that we can all do from time to time to remind ourselves that we don't always suck. :) Sometimes we need a little reminding, most especially from ourselves.

I'm aliiiiiive!

And this blog is being resurrected because...well, it's about time that I put some words on paper again. Why the absence? I don't have a real answer, to be perfectly honest. Chalk it up to a conglomeration of angsty shit, laziness, a lack of things to write about, and...laziness. 

In short, totally my fault. Being angsty is a choice, and so is laziness. As for the lack of things to write about, it's all about perspective. 

So this is me giving this whole blogging thing another go (after X number of failed attempts). I never promised that I'd be good at this thing, but I'll try my best to keep up with the demands of the masses. *crickets* No? Oh, well. 

Welcome back, me!

Singapore-Malaysia Adventure: Day 3

The second sleeper train from Kuala Lumpur back to Johor Bahru was definitely better than the second-class sleeper we experienced the day before. For one, it was private and therefore meant that we could move around more freely. Two, there was a bathroom and an electrical socket. What is luxury?! Avon, my roomie for the night, and I were glad to have some electricity and a shower at our disposal for the next 6 or so hours. Since our electronics were all out of juice and we still had a full day of picture taking to do, we scheduled 2 hours each for our gadgets, 2 hours for her camera and 2 hours each for my camera and cellphone. Worked out quite well since we were wildly clicking on our cameras by the time we got to Legoland.

One thing that you absolutely must know when you're commuting everywhere is the bus schedule. We had spent a couple of hours at JB Sentral after alighting the train to stuff our backpacks in lockers and grab some breakfast and some free wifi. What we didn't get a hold of was the bus schedule to Legoland, unfortunately. Since we missed the bus to Legoland and we had a schedule to follow (sort of), we hired a cab to take us to Lego land. Since there were five of us and only three were allowed inside one cab, we had to pay more for two cabs instead of the 4 RM (I think) that it would have cost us to get to Legoland by bus. But it was no big deal, just a minor speed bump in our Malaysian adventure. We got to Legoland, didn't we?

Hello, Legoland Malaysia!

Now, Legoland is a theme park. It has rides, it has a store where you can buy all sorts of Lego, and Miniland, where tons of Asian landmarks are displayed, all made out of Lego! 

Check out Lego Kuala Lumpur. Use the people in the background as reference to the size of this creation.

Look! A Lego Singapore! Complete with a mini version of the Merlion. FYI, the boats in the water move as well.

Here are some others that I particularly liked

Taj Mahal in India

The Forbidden City in China

Karaweik Barge in Myanmar

Wat Arun in Thailand

AngkorWat in Cambodia

Last but not the least, Bolinao, Pangasinan in the Philippines. 

 

I was a little surprised by what was presented in Miniland to represent the Philippines. Though Bolinao is a beautiful place (though I haven't been there yet), what happened to the Banawe Rice Terraces or Chocolate Hills in Bohol or the underground river in Palawan or a multitude of other beautiful places in the Philippines? Those places would've looked awesome done in Lego, I think.

Legoland is literally a land of Lego. Lego statues everywhere! Here are my favorites:

It's Einstein!

If you want to see a bird's eye view of Legoland, you must ride The Tower. It looks just like a Lego piece and it rotates so that you can get a 360 degree view of the theme park. Unfortunately, Legoland is still in the process of expanding, I think, so there's a patch of land that's just full-on construction. But it's still nice, though. 

To end our trip to Legoland, we rode Project X. There were lots of other rides that we wanted to try but we were running a little late. Compared to the roller coaster we rode at Universal Studios, Project X was way tamer and less scary. Funny thing was, based on the picture taken of us while on the ride you'd think that Project X was the scariest thing in the world. A lot of scared faces in that picture. 

The original plan was to spend the morning in Johor and get back to Singapore a couple of hours after lunch. No deal. It took us a little while to actually leave Legoland because we didn't know when a bus would arrive to take us back to JB Sentral. We got there, thankfully, and after getting our backpacks and passing through a first round at immigration, got on a bus that would take us through Woodlands (where we'd pass through immigration again) to Kranji station. 

Passing through the border from Malaysia to Singapore wasn't much of an event, one moment you're in Malaysia and the next you're in an MRT station bound for Changi airport. We decided to leave our luggage at the airport before we went to Orchard where we had dinner and met up with Raymund, my and Avon's friend from college. H&M at Orchard Road was our store of choice to partake of the Great Singapore Sale but we only had about an hour and a half to go around and shop because we had the Merlion to see and a flight to catch in a few hours. Having Raymund as our guide helped us a lot since we knew exactly where we were going. Getting around was quicker,  but our legs were starting to give up on us. I guess three days of being on your feet will do that to you. 

Muscle pain and foot blisters were momentarily forgotten when we got to the Merlion park, where the Merlion is found chillin like a villain and spewing out a continuous stream of water out of it's lion mouth. 

I shall name you...Merly!

I was pleased that we visited Merly at nighttime, we got to admire the Singapore skyline alongside the Merlion. 

Taking a photo with the Merlion was the symbolic finish line to our Singapore-Malaysia adventure. Our itinerary was done and the only thing left to do was thank Raymund for seeing us, get on our last MRT ride to Changi airport, check-in, and wait. The waiting turned out to be longer than we expected because our flight was delayed. Good job, Cebu Pac. 

I don't remember anything from the flight back home to Manila. We were all dead asleep throughout the entire plane ride, I think. All I remember is that the day was new when we touched down at NAIA 3 and that my sister was waiting for Avon and me. I was happy to come home to a family, to a bed and to internet after a few days of being away abroad (naks!). I had pasalubong to give out and stories to tell. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

So that was my Singapore-Malaysia backpacking adventure. I made some new friends and reunited with an old one. I got to experience the hardships that came with not having a strict itinerary nor any real place to stay for the night. I got to see a lot of beautiful things and experienced a different way of life even if it was just for a few days. I learned things about travel that I wouldn't have learned from anywhere else. I've tasted food that I'm sure I'll be searching for when I get hungry. I rode trains and buses and taxi cabs, survived the blazing heat and humidity, took photos, dealt with the unexpected curveballs with spontaneously formulated Plan B and C and D's, and laughed through the bitch fits, all with just a backpack, a sling bag and a water bottle in my hand. 

Cool. :)

Singapore-Malaysia Adventure: Day 2

Good morning. After about 7 hours on board a sleeper train, we finally arrived in KL Sentral.

Good morning, KL. Show me what you got.

We quickly grabbed our bags to alight the train and since we hadn't had a bath since we arrived in Singapore, we were desperate to find a place to leave our bags and freshen up. We had a bit of trouble finding a place because the hostels were full and check in was at 2 in the afternoon. Thankfully, we booked a room in YMCA and finally got a shower and an electric socket to charge our phones. Feeling refreshed, we went back to KL Sentral to grab a bite for breakfast and get our ticket to Putrajaya. Thanks to the Putrajaya local government, we were able to tour Putrajaya for only 1RM. By far the cheapest 2-hour tour you can ever get. 

This is our very chatty tour guide who showed us some of the
best places in Putrajaya. 

In those two hours, we were able to see some really beautiful architecture. These buildings look so beautiful and grand up close. There was an abundance of curvatures and decorations in all of the buildings that I saw, a stark difference from the buildings that I see at home where they all looked like gigantic concrete boxes. 

We got a little break from the tour and had a quick lunch of chicken rice (with a spicy, Malaysian twist) and teh tarik. I saw some bread being prepared and took a picture, because I'm curious like that. 

After spending the morning soaking up some prime Malaysian architecture, we went back to KL Sentral to catch another bus -- this time to the famous Batu Caves. The climb down from the MRT station was congested, the crowd multinational. It looked like we weren't the only ones excited about the caves. 

This greeted us when we came down from the MRT station.
The rock formations reminded me a lot of Coron, Palawan.

Hanuman

Murugan

1 step down, 271 more to go.

one of the many colorful temples found in the Temple Cave

Majestic, huh? If you're visiting Kuala Lumpur, this is a cultural must-see.

Our day in Kuala Lumpur was almost over, but there were still a couple of things that we needed to do. One was that we needed to meet up with Paige's neighbor Eric who works in Malaysia, another was that we needed to buy some pasalubong for our officemates, friends and family, and that we needed to see the Petronas Twin Towers, of course. OF COURSE! 

We took the monorail from KL Sentral. We took so many stops that I can't even recall which station we met up with Eric at. We were famished by that time so Eric took us to a place he frequents for some dinner. It was cool. The restaurants were all lined up on the street and hawkers were everywhere. It was a familiar sight. It felt like home. After stuffing ourselves at dinner, we took another train to get to Central Market where we bought some Beryl's chocolate to take home. We were under time pressure, sadly, so we couldn't really get some shopping done apart from the chocolates and some pashmina scarves. We still had the Petronas to visit!

And visit we did. 

Hello, beautiful. 

Seeing the Petronas made the day in KL complete. Despite the sweaty clothes, the tired legs and the sleep deprivation, all were forgotten when I saw the towers gleaming against a canopy of stars. It was awesome that I actually had to lie down on the ground to get this photo. Totally worth it. 

Thus ended our adventure in Kuala Lumpur. After getting off the monorail back to KL Sentral, we checked out of YMCA and headed back to the train station to catch our sleeper train (First class this time! A bathroom at our disposal!) back to Johor Bahru, where our next adventure waited--Lego Land. 

Singapore-Malaysia Adventure: Day 1

A week ago today, I was at the forefront of a backpacking adventure with my friends. Mind you, this was my first backpacking trip abroad and my first trip abroad without any family with me. The plan was pretty simple: we get to Singapore, spend the day there, go to Johor so we could take a sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur, spend a day in Kuala Lumpur then take another sleeper train back to Johor where we'd spend the first half of the day in Lego Land and the other half of the day back in Singapore, hopefully shopping our asses off. The plans are usually simple, it's the execution of the plan that gets tricky. In our case, it was tricky with a side of bipolar bitch fits (disclaimer: I am not the source of bitchfits, FYI) and fits of laughter.

Day one, Singapore. We deplaned very early in the morning of June 29, around 1:30 am. Originally, we planned on staying at the airport til there was sunlight, and we did for a couple of hours, but apparently after deplaning passengers should immediately go through immigration. So we had to leave the airport during the wee hours of the morning and resorted to taking a couple of taxi rides around the city to look for a place to stay. In the search for cheap lodging, we sort of felt like we were part of some nativity play. Every place we went to were too expensive, closed or full. We ended up wandering around Chinatown at 5 in the morning before we decided that we could wait for the MRT station to open. That way we could actually start our trip by going somewhere.

that's us walking around Chinatown

That somewhere was Botanic Garden. Imagine us walking amongst morning joggers with our backpacks and cameras! We must've stuck out like a sore thumb. No matter, our brains said, we just wanted breakfast. In our quest for breakfast, we managed to walk around the vast greenery and took some pictures.

Here's an old uncle doing his early morning taichi. 

Botanic Garden is huge. And after a lengthy walk around this huge piece of land, we still couldn't find the food court, much to our dismay. But just when we were about to give up (and I was getting cranky) and find a way out to hail a cab and take us to somewhere with food, we found the food court. Hallelujah! 

Egg and Cheese Roti Prata. Tastes best when you're tired from walking. 

Next on the agenda, Universal Studios. We rode the MRT to get to Harbourfront so we could leave our backpacks at the leave baggage. From there we also managed to get tickets to Universal Studios at a discounted price. We decided to take the cable car to get to Sentosa even though some of us were afraid of heights. 

Thousands of feet above ground. We got a bird's eye view of the city, too. 

Fortunately, by the time we arrived in Singapore, the haze was a thing of the past. We got to enjoy the Singapore heat at its finest at Universal Studios where we got to see some of our favorite characters, like Optimus Prime.

We also got to ride awesome rides like these:

Battlestar Galactica

Transformers 3D

After spending much of the day on our feet, we were tired and sleepy as we left Sentosa. But we still had places to be and trains to catch. After getting our baggage back at Harbourfront, we hopped on an MRT and walked to Maxwell Food Center, the home of Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, featured by Anthony Bourdain in one of his travel shows. Unfortunately, Tian Tian was closed when we got there but we still got to eat some chicken rice because of Ah Tai, the place notorious for opening three stalls away from it's arch nemesis, Tian Tian. 

After a delicious dinner of chicken rice, it was time for us to go to cross the border between Singapore and Malaysia to get to JB Sentral where we'd catch a sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur. By some stroke of luck, we got there relatively stress free. 

A welcome message at Woodlands checkpoint. Be sure to have your passport ready.

Taking a bus from Johor to KL would take about 4 hours. Taking a train would take about 7 hours. Why choose the slower route? How else would we get any sleep?! 

This is Franz showing us his crib for the night

Finally, some sleep. 

And thus concludes Day 1 of the Singapore-Malaysia Adventure.

Things I Know To Be True

Twenty-six years of life has taught me a few things, most especially over the past couple of years. Since I collected another year a few weeks ago, I thought that I'd dispense these learnings to the world. Someone might find them useful.

1. The future can surprise you in ways that you never expected, both in a good and bad way. Sometimes, the things that you expect or want to happen never do, and the things that you never thought would happen actually do. 
2. Things happen because they have to. Even if there is no logic as to why, thinking about things in retrospect gives you the answer. 
3. You need strength to be able to accept #2, especially when the things that are happening are your personal version of hell.
4. You can't control everything nor anyone. Like how people think of you, feel about you, or what they say about you. 
5. Change comes whether or not you want them to. Another thing you can't control.
6. Comparing yourself to others is a one-way ticket to negativity street. And it's very hard to get out of there sometimes.
7. Faking a smile can actually make you feel better on a crappy day. It doesn't exactly solve anything, but it makes you feel like some part of the weight has been lifted.
8. Love is a gift, as cliched and sticky sweet as that sounds. Lucky are those who like someone who actually like them back the same way. 
9. In the end, apart from yourself, the only people you can depend on is family (or whoever you consider to be family). When everything breaks down, fails, goes wrong, the people who will love you even at your worst will be the people who love you unconditionally. 
10. The worst things that are said about you are usually the things you say about yourself, when you're looking at the mirror. This I know for a fact. Don't do this. This is the worst thing you can ever do to yourself. If you can find a way to stop this, let me know.

March 8, 2013

So this is going to be a little sad, nameless reader. I begin with a disclaimer because I don’t want you to go, “oh, there she goes again complaining, yada yada yada…” and cast this off as something that’s stupid or worse, not worth a thing. Hopefully you’ll read this as some sort of reflection rather than a complaint. Anyway, here goes.

I graduated from college in 2009. At that time, my 21-year-old self was elated because of a couple of reasons: one, school was over and mine and my partner's thesis was bound and passed (with an uno to boot), two, I was graduating with most of the people I started college with, and three, I thought the hard part was over and was glad that I was done. For someone who completed four years of college, I must say that was a stupid thought to think. But I suppose I thought that way because at that time, everything was pretty much going my way. I had a degree under my belt, friends from college, my family, and a boyfriend that I was crazy about. Fast forward to four years, a broken heart and one job later, here I am. It's hard to really elaborate, but things aren't as rosy now as they were while I was clutching a sunflower and wearing a sash on graduation day. It turned out that after college, it was going to be a little harder to make new and lasting friends and a little harder to keep the ones that you made in college. It also turned out that some jobs, though they mean well, can't give you all that you need as an employee. And it also turned out that some things are temporary, like relationships and friendships. Fast forward to today, I imagine how I looked at life years ago with how I see life in the present. It's a little bleak from where I stand in the timeline, unfortunately.

Through the years, I've realized things that were likened to slaps to the face and I've learned things about myself that I only learned because I was in pain. In short, lots of pain and lots of difficult facts to accept about the world, about the people around me, and about myself. These things really didn't come up when I was envisioning my life at 21. Actually, I don't think I ever really envisioned my life after college at all. Maybe that was the problem. Needless to say, the way I am now is light years away from who I was post-graduation. I didn't know the difficulties that lay before me after college. (People tell you that the “real world” was brutal, but you don’t really believe them until you’re in the middle of a beating.) I didn't know of the uncertainties that riddled every corner, of the decisions you can or cannot make and the stupid mistakes you commit. Basically, I didn’t know how easy it was to be in school until I was officially out of it and things started to get tough. In fact, thinking back, school was where I was probably my most stable. I knew who I was in school. I knew what I was doing. I had classes to go to, papers to write, places to hangout in, friends and classmates I could talk to, teachers to impress/avoid…if I had known about the safety bubble college provided me while I was a student, I probably would’ve stayed longer. I honestly didn't know how much of a good thing I had until it was gone. I didn't value my friends or made more of them when I was in college, now I miss having them because I rarely have opportunities to see them. I didn't know how much fun I was having and could have until I’m left with just looking at pictures of other people’s vacations after getting home from a mid shift. I didn't know that feelings could change quickly and that people change quicker. Priorities change, experiences change, everything changes. And I can't really blame them because hard as I try to stay the same, I've changed, too. Nothing really is "for good” no matter how hard we try to hold on. That’s the funny thing about change, I suppose. It happens even though we don’t want it to.

There seems to be a great disconnect between me and everything else lately. A disconnection between who I was and who I am and who I could be, between myself and the social circles that I swam in, between the job I have and that great “something” that’s supposed to fire me up and make me feel alive (which I don’t completely know yet), between the relationships that I have and the relationships that I lost. Basically, there’s a dissonance between the life that I want and the life that I lead. And it makes me feel guilty because with everything that I have, a roof over my head with a family who loves me no matter what, with a few friends who I feel genuinely care about me and a job in a company that takes care of me, what more could I ask for? Why do I feel like something’s missing when objectively speaking, I have more than enough? Why do I want more? Why do I feel guilty for wanting more? Have I been making all the wrong decisions in my life? Have I really been making decisions at all?

I'm afraid I've done well in school but am barely keeping a passing grade in life. I’m having trouble navigating through the sudden turns, shortcuts, one-ways, intersections and forks in the road and I really don't know how to find my way back. Life is pretty much a series of questions, in my mind. As I write here in my room, I feel more alone than ever. Because other people seem to have it all figured out. They don’t have questions like these running marathons in their heads. Or if they did, the questions don’t seem to be bothering them as much.

Maybe that’s why I’m writing this. Maybe it’s just me overthinking things again. Maybe I sound like every other twenty-something in the world, I don’t know. But I’m writing this because I need to know that this thing that’s happening is going to end and that I’m going to be okay. I’m writing this because I need to know that someone out there might be feeling exactly what I’m feeling and by reading this won’t feel alone. Then I won’t be alone. Maybe by writing this, I’ll find strength to shoulder on and keep patient. If it’s not okay it’s not the end, right? Someday, I’ll get my answers.