Here's what's going to keep my nights busy for the entire November:



So what's NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

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Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

That's a commitment to write an average of 1666.67 words a day to "win" the challenge. There are no limitations on genre, plot, or language, as long as you don't use any earlier written material and you finish before November 30, 11:59:59 pm (local time). The grand prize? None, other than the satisfaction of knowing you have written a novel, or at least the first 50k words of one.

Why did I sign up for this? The tequila from sir jun's farewell dinner made me do it. No, really. For some reason, the whole thing sounded perfectly reasonable after that shot. Ha!

I don't know... oddly enough, I find myself looking forward to the challenge.

This should be fun. And I swear, I'm going to include a ninja and a pirate in my novel or die trying.

I woke up today and found it hard to open my right eye. Yup, a quick look in the mirror confirmed it - something bit me. In the eye. Sa dinami-dami ng pwede nyang kagatin --- mata ko pa. Grr.

My mother assured me that the culprit was not a cockroach (in which case I would have freaked out) but probably a flea that strayed from one of the neighbors' flea-infested dogs. 

I became midnight snack to a parasitic pest taking up permanent residence in an animal that its irresponsible owners refuse to take responsibility for. And I don't even have a dog. Kakainis! Anyone have the number for the Manila dog pound? Or better yet, who wants azucena?

Apparently, hindi lang pala tao ang peste sa bahay namin. Sabagay, at least ang pulgas pwede tirisin.

Dear relative-who-shall-not-be-named,

You can stop the friendly act. I can safely assure you that it's not working.  And the injured-puppy look you've been sporting lately? Not convincing.

You have hurt my mother, disrespected my father, and insulted them both. In their own home, no less! Congratulations on finally being able to show us who you really are after all these years. I didn't know you had it in you to be so mean - to two people who have shown you nothing but kindness. And I know you've never been particularly bright, but what on earth made you think I'm going to act like nothing happened? Hello? Good luck finding a daughter who will be pleased with you right now. Let me know if you do so we can nominate her for sainthood.

No, I don't hate you. I don't want to see you dead. At least not yet. But if you do that again? I don't care if I'm hundreds of miles away. I'm going to come back and do what my parents are too nice to do -- slap you in the face.

Wala na, the last Harry Potter book has been spoiled for me. =(

That's two years of anticipation down the drain.

Hay, so much for delayed gratification.

Yup, plus 3.

So here's how the past week went:

Friday night we went out to dinner, at our favorite seafood resto. Syempre we had chili crabs and mantao (fried buns). I swear, I could survive on just the sauce and the buns for an entire week. Another addition to the already long list of things that I'm going to miss.

Saturday, we celebrated Pam's birthday. We had good food, a karaoke session, and a super funny gift-grabbing activity. Much more fun than the traditional exchange gift, as the participants have a choice - open a present, or go grab someone else's. If one grabs another's present, the other person gets the same choice - to grab or to open. Strategies and conspiracies are allowed and encouraged, mostly because they usually don't work.

I ended up with a really cute bag, but the original gift I opened was, uh... slightly traumatising something more risqué.

As I don't wish to remember my frustration on Sunday, we can summarize it thus: LBC is evil. And their staff was put here on Earth to test how much frustration it takes to make people go on a killing rampage.

On Monday I went back to Manila, then went shopping with my mother on Tuesday, and reported for work on Wednesday.

And as predicted, the daily commute is stressing me out.

The Good:

Today was my farewell lunch. It was organized by one of my officemates, and what I loved most about it was that almost everyone was there. Over the past few years, we've bid goodbye to so many colleagues and friends, but this time I'm the biddee, not the bidder. It's an interesting position to be in.

That's not to say the food wasn't good. It was. Very good, in fact. We had Baba-Nonya cuisine, which, I think, is unique to Malaysia. Funny, though, you could find Pinoy counterparts for most of the dishes.

We had beans sauteed in some sort of sambal sauce, slightly sour fish curry (one of the dishes for which we have nothing similar), prawns, chicken in a nutty dark sauce with something that very much resembles chestnuts (it tastes much nicer than it sounds, promise), kikiam (not the jollijeep variety, but the special kind wrapped in crispy taupe), and something very similar to our chopsuey.

Oh, and here's the appetizer: the acha (achar?). Cut the veggies thinner and remove the chili, and you get our achara.

Here's an interesting fact: baba nonya, from what I could gather, is not just a cuisine, but a race. It also refers to those of mixed Chinese and Malay parentage. So I guess the pinoy equivalent would be Chinoy and Chowking?

Something came up last night, so I'm a bit behind my packing up schedule. I need to make up for it tonight and tomorrow if I'm going to have some time to goof off this weekend.

Anyway, I've called LBC up to pick up my box on Sunday. Hopefully, they will arrive as scheduled. Since my experience with them has not exactly been stellar, this is really, really stressing me out.

The last time I had something shipped, they botched the pickup schedule and didn't pick my box up until a week later. Which turned out okay, as I happened to have very nice housemates at the time. But now I live alone, and I'm leaving the day after, so I don't know what I'll do if they pull a similar stunt on me this time. Hay.

Here's one more stressor: contemplating my future daily commute from our house to the office.

I actually have two options: One, take one of those fx taxis that go straight to Makati, the last of which leaves our neighborhood at an ungodly 6:30 am. Hello? Anong gagawin ko sa opisina, magmumulto?

Second option? The dreaded LRT. :shudder: If you ever want to have a taste of purgatory, ride the lrt during the morning and evening rush hour. At the very least it will make you sympathize with the sardines whose destiny it is to end inside a can.

So I'm leaving.

The support period for my project ended yesterday. I'll officially exit from our client on Friday, and by Monday morning I'll be on my way back to Manila.

Three years and fifteen days.

There were times when I can hardly believe I've been here for that long. Other times I felt like I've been here for so long, its hard to remember when I haven't been here.

Now I just find it hard to believe that I have to leave in a few days.

The jumbo shipping box currently dominating my apartment forces me to face reality, though. My books and DVD collection have disappeared into it. Tonight, most of my shoes and most of the contents of my dresser drawers will be safely stored inside it as well.

The more I put inside the box, the heavier my heart feels.

They conducted a fire drill in our building today.

It wasn't too bad, they scheduled it for 4:30 pm, so at least we weren't sun-baked, but we had to walk all the way to Expo - where we were supposed to assemble. Thank goodness we're only on the 3rd floor.

Anyway, it reminded me of when we went to see the Petronas Towers in KL, which used to be the tallest buildings in the world until just a couple of years ago. I wonder how they conduct their fire drills? And what if you were a regular employee working on, say, the 88th floor? Who wears high heels?

Do they provide a long, hopefully strong rope down the window so you can rappel down to the ground?

Or maybe a complimentary parachute?

Well, after a two-week break, I'm well and truly back to my regular routine.

If I had to summarize the entire two-week period, I can do it in one word: busy. I went back to Manila, to Boracay, back to Manila, to Singapore, to KL, and back again to Singapore. I've met up with a lot of friends, did my errands, shopped. My mother was rather disappointed, actually, because I only spent one, as in just one day at home. Hindi na raw ako napirmi. Haha.

I swear, sometimes it felt like I've done nothing but pack and/or unpack my bags.

I've had a lot of fun, though. It was especially nice to see friends I haven't seen for years.

And for a change (basically because I had no intention of lugging around a laptop wherever I went), I wrote my notes on my vacation the old-fashioned way. As in pen and paper. Well, okay, pink pen and very cute pink notebook. It felt weird, actually, keeping a traditional journal after all these years. The last time I had one was, what? High school? And I realized something: syet, ang pangit na ng sulat ko! Hay.

Anyway, I'm planning to post pictures and accounts of my break. Later. After I've managed to decipher what I wrote. And after I've restored some semblance of order to my apartment na mas mukha pang refugee center  right now kesa apartment. And after I've dealt with the huge pile of laundry that has swallowed my ironing board.

Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike ironing clothes? Gah!