how was your Holy week?

mine was quite productive. aside from the Maundy Thursday reflections (!!!) and the Good Friday procession with the family (my dad opted to stay in the house, walking around the town non-stop is quite tiring), it was an unusually fruitful loooong weekend for me.

here's how the week goes:


WEDNESDAY: braving the storm

a little past 4 pm, that's how EDSA Guadalupe (southbound) looks like, it's still moderate, a few more hours and then it's chaos! i didn't rush to the bus terminal, instead i went to SM Makati to buy some pasalubong and some gifts for my nephew who graduated red honor (valedictorian ata katumbas nun) from nursery and for another inaaanak for his birthday (malaki utang ko dito, 3 yrs ko nang di nakikita hehe). as i thought it was still early and if i go to the bus terminal right away, rush hour might just catch me and the oh-so-heavy alabang-slex-sto.tomas batangas combined traffic at this time of the year might send me to boiling point, i decided to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (hehee) and though it was just okey and visually appealling, it was a nostalgic ride down the memory lane for me (and how i was hooked on the cartoon series in the early 90's). at 10 pm, i was already in the Lucena bound bus terminal and after 30 minutes and eight buses full of passengers, i was sitting inside the 9th bus with Hed Kandi's Beachhouse playing on my phone and despite the late night and/or early morning traffic, i reached Lucena 3:30 am and hopped into the next bus and it's another two hours of travel (one hour standing, one hour sitting uncomfortably next to a snoring guy haha).

on glorietta with the moon

THURSDAY: just stayed in the house, played with my nephews, do some errands, a few moments of reflections and then i sleep.

FRIDAY: it was such a quiet day. quite right for the mood that Good Friday should be, and it suites the moment as we reflect that Jesus died on the cross for the salvation of mankind.

SATURDAY: the second batch of palay (about 6 sacks) just arrived and it only mean i need to stretch my bones and be ready para magbilad ng palay.

when i was still in the province, summer means palay-drying. we used to harvest the palay ourselves (at ilang beses ko rin nahiwa ang mga daliri ko ng karet, aray!) but since we all became busy, we let the caretaker to do it for us.

the sky was not consistently clear, but it was a hot day and we manage to dry up three of the six sacks.

at around 3 pm, a little rain fell and it's a good thing that we already put the palay inside the house. i also need to prepare as i have to attend a children's party with my nephew.

i was supposed to attend the Salubong later in the night but the palay drying and the children's party gave me a little headache so was on bed early (was 9:30 pm early?).

SUNDAY: Easter sunday! ang pasko ng pagkabuhay. i don't know, but i have so much energy to start my day by, well, unloading the yet to be dried 3 more sacks of palay (i am wise enough to put them one by one on a trolley, papahirapan ko ba sarili ko? hehe).

the whole day was like that, and while drying the palay, i managed to do the laundry and get some mangoes at the backyard, the green apple mango's just right with sweet and spicy alamang (naglalaway nako hehe).

it was a tiring day but nevertheless a productive one. and i am glad i get to do again the things i used to do when life was still simple...

MONDAY: went back to Manila and the supposedly five hours of travel to Alabang was unfornately became seven hours thanks to a barangay fiesta in Sto. Tomas, Batangas, haay (ranting, ranting...)

how was your loooong weekend? :D

Semikal

bo. skinhead. bokalbs. yeah.

for the first time since birth, i let my barber cut my hair almost bald, no, he razorred my hair to its almost baldness glory, cool.

when the hair is gone, before and after: episode one

that's how i wore my hair more than a week ago, gelled/waxed to stand up to its end. now, i don't have no use, at least for the remaining summer hot days, for my bottle of liquid gel and that white, cream-like hair wax.

anatomy of a skinhead: razor number three

i don't usually change my hairstyle (it's a guy thing, i think), i can count years before i can try another one. the safest haircut for me is the reliable barber's cut, but i also tried the gwapings look (haha, remember eric fructuoso?), the required and damned 3x4 haircut during my ROTC days and the untidy ehead's magbabanda college boy look (the latter's the result of my two years of being deprived of a decent hairstyle, thanks to ROTC).

when i started working, i made the barber's cut as my standard haircut, and then Jerry Yan and the meteor garden came, i let my hair grow a little longer to have that F4 look (now i cringed why oh why did i do that hahaha) but i also cut it after two months and tried the short, anime/spiked hair and have it for years until i decided to try skinhead, for a change.

i did a lot of thinking and did a lot of imagining at how will i look like after everything's done, how my gf, my friends, my officemates, my family and other people will react to this one big step for baldkind hahaha. it was such a big deal for me, like stepping into an unfamiliar territory, a psychological thing of walking blindly in a dark tunnel or swimming into the deep blue sea, simply put, i was undecided. and i haven't decided yet even after my barber started trimming my old hairstyle, and then like a thunder coming from nowhere in a bright sunny day, i said "pare, iskin head na natin!" in a flash, he held two razors on his hands, razor number 1 and razor number 3. i choose number 3 as I don't want my scalp to announce to the world that i am such a scarhead (aksidente, na-piko po ako sa ulo nung elementary dahil sa kalikutan) and so i can also have a little protection from the sun and a little security that i can grow it back, fast. hehehe.

and so it happened. in less than two minutes, my hair's on the floor and what remained on my head are just tiny strands of my once spiked hair and a scalp peeping brightly against the flourescent light. i did it.

...ayaw nila ng skinhead o kalbo

am i happy? yeah! but not without the initial shock and confusion. you see, with my old hairstyle, i rarely check my reflection on the mirror (confident??? lol) but with this new look, i STARE WIDE-EYED at myself! hehe. and after staring, there's the second look and a third look LOL. i was even confused at my own shadow because what i am seeing is a bald man's shadow and i am not, oh well, i am now, almost. haha.

my shadow (and not michael jordan's)

i actually liked it, and on my first day with this look, i got the attention of the entire world, sus, para silang nakakita ng kalbong multo! hahaha. the shock!

this one's best for the hot summer days, preskong-presko. and my bath time is now faster by two minutes as i shampoo (yes, i still does) my head, err... hair almost in an instant, i can now fixed myself faster by at least five minutes as there's no more gel/wax to put on my hair, no more combing, no more extra time for washing off my hands (for the wax as i applied it using my hands) and no more of those extra effort to have my hair look decent and have those butiki-killer look. i might wear it for the next three months. so good luck to me. hehe

i asked the barber kung bagay naman ba yung gupit sa akin, sabi nya "buti na lang, bilog ang ulo mo."

i asked lyn kung bagay naman ba yung gupit sa akin, sabi nya (after much thinking) "ok lang." hahaha. i didn't bother asking other people as they might just roll their eyes and ask what's that again? hehehe.

hmm, bagay nga ba (scratches head). ah basta, skinhead is cool. c",)

HOT!

not me, but the weather is.

just two weeks ago, we had this christmassy cold weather and then now, we are starting to perspire and in the middle of the night, you felt hot and then you have this sudden urge, uhm, yeah sudden urge to take a bath.

lol.

is it already el niño? or summer is just early (i hear the beach calling...)? mukhang double time na ang kelangan sa pagwo-work out (as if...) to have that model-body look (walang pakialaman ha hehe). seriously, the again sudden change in weather just highlighted the unsatisfying-forever-complaining nature of men (and women). kapag malamig, nagrereklamo, kapag mainit, ano pa bang maririnig? syempre, reklamo din.

at kasali ako dun.

i have the body whom i called the sweat capital of the world. kapag nasa labas at konting galaw lang, pagpapawisan na, imagine how i look like when it's hot or when i am jogging or when i am playing badminton? scary! and i am not even chubby! hehehe. hindi naman gross tingnan pero parang dehins normal na sobra akong pagpawisan, the good thing is pinaglihi yata ako ng nanay ko sa pag-inom ng tubig kaya nare-replenish naman yung nawawalang liquid (parang gatorade, is it in you?). and i usually have excessive sweating sa bandang noo lang, leeg, front and back of my body and not in the armpit (now that is gross hehe).

on a typical day, while sitting lazily and randomly pressing the keyboard in my office, i usually consume about six to eight glasses of water, and that's before lunch time. add about the same number of glasses hanggang makauwi ako ng bahay sa hapon. buti nga di pa nagtataka dito sa office kumbakit bumibilis yata yung pag-replenish at pag-order namin ng tubig hehehe. sa loob ng mahigit walong oras na pagtitig ko sa monitor ng computer ko, at least 14 glasses yata ang naiinom ko, hindi pa kasama ang kape at yung tinutungga ko sa bahay. tapos nagtatanong ako kung san ko kinukuha ang ipinapawis ko? lol.

from what i know and what i read, sweat is the body's way of cooling itself, whether that extra heat comes from hardworking muscles or overstimulated nerves. (trivia: our external genital organs has no sweat glands, kaya no sweat, go figure! hehe). and there are two kinds of sweat glands: Eccrine (the most numerous type, found all over the body) and Apocrine (mostly confined in the Axilla/armpit and the anal-genital area. These two sweat glands have the same way and/or process of producing sweat, they only differ on the content: while both glands produced sweat with have sodium, chloride and potassium, Apocrine-produced sweat has protein and fatty acids which make it thicker/milkier and yellowish in color. hmm, kaya pala minsan parang me stain yung damit natin no? uy, itse-check nya yung damit nya. hehehe

i really do not have the right to complain na pawisin ako, ganyan na talaga eh, minsan di lang komportable at kelangan ko pang magdala lagi ng extra shirt in case of emergency at para na rin fresh (naks!) ang pakiramdam. and take note also, na hindi lang panyo ang dala ko araw-araw kundi towel. at dahil sa dami ng t-shirt o polo na nasusuot ko araw-araw, ibig sabihin doble rin ang dami ng labahan ko!!! hehehe at yun ang nakakalungkot dun. lol.

anyway, comforting isipin na kapag pinagpapawisan ka ang ibig sabihin daw ay healthy ka at normally functioning ang katawan mo. yun nga lang, marami ka laging labahan. hehehe.

you really cannot have it all :)