Till Death, Do We Part?

I have almost always been single. Perhaps, there's the occasional season where I find myself trapped in an arrangement of sorts with someone, and said arrangement can be called a "relationship" by some. But, at the end of the day, I have built my world around no one but myself.

Which is why I find some of my friends silly. I know people who can't exist without a significant other. It's like the very fabric of reality that gives them consistency is shred when they're not tied to someone else. Like they exist only through some transitive property of existence which depends on their current paramour.

Anyway, so, point is: I'm single, always have been, and I'm good with it.

Except, I went to the hospital alone the other day. I've been suffering through some stomach pains lately. I thought I had finally caught amoebiasis from the fishball peddler who drop by every afternoon to enable us into stuffing our faces with his fried food stuff. Doctor said it's because I've been drinking too many coffee, and getting myself stressed out.

I have been medically advised to avoid stress. I wonder how far I can take that in the office, so I asked the doctor to write that in the prescription: "Avoid stress, like working after 6 pm", but she thought I was kidding.

Anyway, while waiting for the nurse to discharge me, I couldn't help but overhear the conversations of the other patients around me. Like, there was this old guy talking to his son/daughter on the phone, and they were arguing about where to get the money for the appendectomy needed to save the old guy's life.

It was at that moment that the triage nurse's comment came back to haunt me: "No companion, sir?"

Sometimes, when one's mortality is in question, people couldn't help but have some expectations. Such as, "who would be there when I leave this world?" And at that moment, as I surf Facebook alone on my hospital bed at the emergency room, I realized that I built myself so strong that I had no need for anyone else to be there.

But others do.

For others, leaving this world alone is a scary thought. They need to comfort of family and friends to hold their hands, and tell them things will get better, and it's always not as bad as you think.

And for some, the government is denying them this right.

As long as the government (and some small minded individuals) refuse to acknowledge that there is a need to redefine what constitutes a family, we will be denying people the most basic of human right:

To live and die as a human person. To spend's one life with a mate of one's choosing. To enter a social, legal, and binding contract with another person to spend their lives together for better or for worse.

The thing is, the people against the legalization of same sex marriages GET NOTHING from stopping it. Which is something I really, really, really do not understand. What do you get from stopping two people from spending their lives together?

See, I love being alone. I get to do a lot with my time. As a writer, I cherish every moment I can spend away from the real world and immersed in the ones I've created for my characters.

But loneliness shouldn't be something one enforces on other. It's their business, not yours.

Let her kiss the bride. Let him take his man home to mom. The world can be an amazing place, if we would let it.

Today's OBB

Ok, so I'm here in a coffeeshop, trying to work on mmy new book.

I have this thing where to shut the whole world up, I enclose myself in a wall of sound. It's the only way I can focus. I have a pretty short attention span, and unless I'm totally lost in the reality I'm creating, I can't function. So, I have this thing where I plug in to a playlist, and it's like three songs stuck on repeat. I don't like the mood/tempo of the songs shifting, so I have, like, playlists customized to the kind of mood that I'm trying to capture with my writing.

Mostly, it's epic. It's all Clint Mansell, and Mozart, and big, dramatic orchestra music.

Today, I'm listening to Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, with Edvard Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King occassionally breaking the loop. It makes my writing sound like a very ironic Korean movie where I fall in love with someone, and either one of us dies in the end.

Hall of the Mountain King is a really good music for stalking people. It's what I'm listening to when I'm shadowing a crush, and they begin to notice, so I have to duck into an alley, or dart behind someone.

Samsung Galaxy Products I'm Using - Short Review

There's a recent study that says consumers nowadays consult up to 21 sources of information before making a purchase of a gadget. Which is I think quite truthful, as I consult several blogs and friends first before buying anything. So, as a way of paying back that digital karma, here are two quick reviews of the gadgets I'm using from the Samsung Galaxy family.

SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB 2 7.0 (P3100)

 

This model delivers as it promised. It's slim, lightweight, works fast, responds quickly. It has phone functionality, so you can send and receive SMS, MMS, and CALLS. More than OK battery life (which by my standards means it can last 24 hours with moderate usage).

What it's not good for: heavy functions like editing documents. I thought getting one would help me write documents more nomadically. I imagined myself hooking it up with a Bluetooth keyboard, and typing away. As a writer, I have very low requirements for a mobile device. As long as it has a decent word processor, I'm good. I downloaded apps that can create and edit documents (Kingsoft and Polaris), and the Photoshop Touch. The interface has a steep learning curve, and the small screen makes me fidget with the zoom and the display, plus I can't navigate through the document as deftly as I'm used too on my laptop. This is a matter of personal preference, though. I believe that this is less of the gadget's shortcoming, and more of an incompatibility between my expectations and its capabilities.

What it's good for: MEDIA CONSUMPTION. Now if you like watching videos, reading e-books, listening to music, surfing the web, this is the device for you. It's very portable, and it can display a wide range of media. Games play great because its display is big enough to be immersive, yet it's handy enough to be portable. It displays websites really well too, so you can totally wallow in your friends' newsfeed and timelines and tumblr posts. It plays videos really great. It's very nearly the size of typical books, so the reading experience has a natural feel to it when you're holding the device. Also, I've installed FLIPBOARD, and I spend literally hours flipping through the digital content that I'm following.

My only beef is that GOOGLE PLAY STORE doesn't have the BLOGGER APP available for the Philippines. Which really, really sucks. It's a Google product in the first place! This device would have been amazing if I can use it to blog on the go. Which is a shortcoming it shares with my other Galaxy device.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S3 MINI (I8190)

I had no plans of buying this phone. Our company offered to get us SAMSUNG GALAXY S3 MINI on installment, so, on impulse, I bought one.

I love it. It's an amazing smartphone, and more so because I'm powering it with my SMART postpaid sim--because, let's face it, I don't want to ruin a great product with a network that has a horrible mobile internet connection, causes my text messages to get delayed, and has a heavily congested system. I'm not wasting all my money on a smartphone that a faulty network would render useless. That's why for my gadgets, I only trust SMART, it's the country'st strongest network, and it has FOUR TIMES more fiber optic infrastructure that allows the fastest transmission of data.

I have nothing to say against it. It's sleek and lightweight enough as a phone to carry around. Battery life is... OK enough.  It feels so natural in my hands. It has a very clear and bright display, and it works really fast. It has all the cool functions of its bigger brother, the S3. For a midrange phone, it's amazing.

Except for the camera. I feel like at that price range, Samsung could have gone all out and equipped the S3 Mini with at least an 8MP main camera at the back. Even if it bumps the cost a little upwards, it would still be worth it, and it would really, really, really make this a killer smartphone. Instead, they stuck a mediocre camera with a phone that has an amazing range of functionality. Media consumption wise, it's great too. It's a compact media player too. 



 

Siege Malvar is a Camwhore

Imma SEO this shiz and go all like SIEGE MALVAR SIEGE MALVAR SIEGE MALVAR SIEGE MALVAR on this post coz I don't want people image searching me on Google, and they end up on some random page where I'm picking my nose.

So here are some SIEGE MALVAR branded camwhoring. Also works with SEIGE MALVAR.

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Where Is This

I had a dream last night where I was travelling with a guy named Paolo or Paulo, and he's not an actual person I know or a friend I have, but he's like this dream amalgam of people I know, and we were travelling and it was to a place much colder than Manila (could be Baguio, Moscow, Seoul). Anyway, we were shopping for groceries and other necessities, when I realized that I packed a lot of clothes, but forgot to bring underwear. My friend said "You can use mine for the mean time, we're basically the same size", which makes me doubt if I wasn't just hallucinating, and was in fact, travelling alone.

When we reached the place where we were staying, my sister was there, and she was freaking out because she saw a baby crocodile scampering around the floor. And if there was a baby croc, the momma croc must be near.

Anyway, that's where the dream ended. With the three of us looking for the baby crocodile, and hoping its mother wasn't knocking on the door.

[I'm mentioning this dream now not for any particular detail, but for the eerie feeling that this dream is a continuation of a previous dream. Not exactly a recurring dream, but one that is continued. I just can't remember the details of the previous dream---or maybe it was a TV show I was watching? Anyway, the dream made me realize how much I'm yearning to travel for this year.]