Things I Have Learned So Far

1. Never engage in an argument you know you’d never win. Losing is not a healthy feeling.

2. Always smile. Sometimes the cruelest person makes a u-turn when they see people smiling. Plus it’s a good exercise for your facial muscles.

3. Never settle if you are not sure you’re ready for big responsibilities. It takes a lot of effort for relationships to work.

4. Choose your partner and wear a condom. It’s still best to be safe than sorry.

5. Get a job you’re happy with. Don’t waste your youth staying in something you don’t like.

6. If you feel he is gay, most probably he is. Trust your instincts.

7. Never nag. It’s painful to the ears and you don’t get any good results.

8. Check your options before making a decision. It’s stressful to return a tee that does not fit you especially after 7 days of purchase.

9. Read labels and instructions. This will help you understand better and avoid a lot of questions.

10. Lock your rooms. This will save you, and your moms, the embarrassment of finding out you’re gay because you’re sucking your neighbor, the local tubero.

11. Never wear skinny jeans if you are vertically-challenged. It doesn’t look good.

12. Don’t lie about your age. People will find out anyway.

13. When looking for an apartment, make sure it doesn’t flood in the area. You’ll never know when the next Ondoy will hit again.

14. It is okay to kiss-ass as long as you get what you want. Machiavelli said, “The end justifies the means.” Make sure you do this discreetly though.

15. Never get involved with someone from work. It causes distractions and rumors, which prevents people from effectively and efficiently doing their jobs.

16. Love yourself. No one else will.

17. Take a break at least once every three months. This will help you relax and sort your priorities.

18. Believe in something good. This will keep you sane.

19. If you think you can’t, then you probably couldn’t. Keep a positive outlook and look forward.

20. Move on. It helps.

21. Treat your friends out at least once every two months. This will give them the perception you’re doing well even if you’re not and you’d be their envy.

22. Trim or shave. Proper hygiene is the key to a feeling good about yourself. Plus it will make you look bigger.

23. Never put a ball-point pen in your pocket. It stains.

24. Boxers are better than briefs. It allows your junjun to breathe and access is easier.

25. Don’t cross the road if a pink sign says, “Walang Tawiran. Nakamamatay.” Even if you don’t get hit by a car, you’ll get arrested by an MMDA officer.

26. Never buy self-help books on love. They only make things worse.

27. Have faith in people. You’ll be surprised.

28. Get drunk once in a while. It’s a good form of release.

29. Get an iPod. It makes long distance travelling easier to bear.

30. And lastly, read Brew. It’s better than having sex. Lol.

The Beautiful and the Disaster Part II

The night seemed to be going perfect until DISASTER happened...

While I was drinking me second beer, which turned out to be the last for the night, the handler of candidate #5 approached me:

Mark: "To, marunong ka magDrive?"
Me: "Opo."
Mark: "May motor ka?"
Me: "Opo."
Mark: "Ok lang ba ihatid mo siya (points at contestant #5) sa bahay nila?"
Me: "Ok lang. TagaSaan ba siya?"
Mark: "Sa Odiongan, sa bayan malapit sa RSU (Romblon State University)."
Me: "Ang layo naman. Sino kasama mo?"
Mark: "Ikaw lang. Sino ba pwede mong kasama?"
Me: "Baka si Buen o si Kit pero mukhang nag-eenjoy na sila eh." (More dance na yung dalawa sa gitna ng dancefloor.)
Mark: "Sige ako na lang."

I agreed and asked them to wait outside the plaza while I get the bike parked across the street. I told Buen I'd come back for him as soon as possible.

We hit the road and everything was smooth for a few minutes. Most of the road were cemented and we were running at around 60 tops. Then the handler asked me, "Ikaw ba panganay ni Mam Dhors?" I said yes and our conversation went from there. He said he is from Batiano and is teaching college in RSU. Batiano is the birth place of my mom and is about 3 kilometers away from town where we live. We were having a nice talk until...

The cement road ended and unfortunately, I did not notice it. I was not able to slow down as we hit the dirt road. We swayed for a bit but I was able to control the vehicle after a while until I noticed something was wrong. "Flat ata," I said as I stopped in a dark corner of the road where there were no street lights and the only visible lights were coming from the moon and the vehicle.

Confirmed. We had a flat tire, a really flat tire at that. I tried to test drive it alone but it was really hard to maneuver. Mark decided to text his friend to pick us up. I texted Buen I couldn't go back because of what happened and that he'd have to go home with Kit instead. No reply. I took it as "ok."

After around 20 minutes of waiting, he arrived, our savior. He took the contestant and the Mark with him while I drive the vehicle with the flat tire this time I was going at a speed of 20. They were behind me as was driving at the same speed. Hope came over me when Mark mentioned a vulcanizing shop at the next barangay, Gabawan.

We drove for what I thought were endless minutes until we reached Gabawan. Luck was obviously not our side and the shop was closed.

Next stop was Barangay Dapawan which was about four barangays away. There was a lot of things going on on my mind.

Shit! Magagalit si Papa. Lalo na si Mama kasi di nya ako pinayagan originally eh nung nagpaalam ako. Si Papa lang talaga yung umOkey. Baka di rin ako payagan bumalik mamayang gabi para sa Ms. Gay dahil dito. Di ko ba sasabihin ang nangyari? Paano mamaya pag gising nila at nalaman na flat yung gulong? PaVulcanaize ko kaya at huwag sabihin sa kanila para parang walang nangyari? Paano kung wala nang open? Gisingin ko na lang kaya si Papa at siya na magpaVulcanize?

I was almost already murmuring to myself when the other vehicle drove past me and I heard the driver say, "Sundan mo kami." We were already in Dapawan. We took a left turn and then another right until we reached the VULCANIZING SHOP. It was heaven. I never thought I'd look at a vulcanizing shop in such admiration. The sign said CLOSED.

The driver of the other vehicle shouted but in a controlled manner, "Bes, Bes." There was light. An old man, obviously interrupted from his deep slumber came out of the bamboo-slit gate.

 Rear tire was taken off for some vulcanizing job. The old guy didn't get any help from me as I don't know anything about bikes.

He agreed to help us. I told the driver bring contestant #5 home. Mark agreed to stay with me. The vulcanizer guy started his magic. He first removed the rear tire of the bike, removed the interior and determined how many holes there was. He said there were many and are the result of running on a flat tire. My bad! Later he'd tell me there were actually only two holes, one caused by a nail which penetrated the hard rubber and the other caused by running on a flat tire. I let out a sigh of relief.

I texted Papa immediately. I told him the truth. He asked me if I needed help, I said I was okay. A few minutes later, Papa was there on a bike. He left after being assured that everything was fine. I think it helped that he knew Mark. The driver came back with two burgers and two bottles of water then left. Mark and I continued on with our conversation until the vulcanizer guy was finished.

 My SAVIOR. If you're ever here in Odiongan, Romblon and is in need of any vulcanizing jobs, I suggest you go here. It is located at Barangay Dapawan. Just look for the market place and you'll definitely won't miss it. They also sell over a year old vinegars. Maasin na maasim at really affordable prizes. The also have uling and mini lanterns for sale. Kaya ano pang hinihintay mo, Go Na Here at Elvis Vulcanizing Shop! They've got it all for you! Chos!

40 pesos! That was how much it cost us!

We asked again thinking we heard it wrong but we heard it right. 40 pesos. Mark gave him 50 pesos and I added 20 pesos. Mark was as shocked as me and we shifted our conversation from him being a handler to how much a vulcanizing shop earns in a day. We ended in an agreement that that's the line of business we'd never venture into to. Then a few laughs until we reached his home. I drove back to town and bought myself cigarette from a burger stand near the town plaza on the way home.

The Beautiful and the Disaster Part I

Buen, a highschool friend invited me to go to Brgy. Panique, the last barangay of the town. It's about 20 to 30 minutes ride from town if you're going 60.

Here's how the invitation went - as exactly how I got it:

Buen: "Tian,my motor ka?tara punta tau ng panique...txtbCk po
Me: "Nu meon?"
Buen: "Coronation,punta tau txt me f okay d2 lang aq kanto dapawan sa my simenteryo,la ne me xtra load...tnx"
Me: "Sige ligo lang ako. Daanan kita jan."
Buen: "Ok xtian take your time dito lang ako...cgeh po w8 kita..."

So I hurriedly prepared for the night out. I picked him just outside the cemetery gate and we headed to a gasoline station where they sell gasoline in one liter Coke bottles. We got a liter of gasoline.

We arrived at Barangay Panique around ten in the evening. Inside the elementary school campus was being held the Ms. Panique 2010. It was already starting. The place was crowded so we decided to stay outside and walk for a bit. Just a note:  According to Buen, it was an open pageant which means anybody from any barangay or town could join which was the case. Made me wonder why it was not titled Ms. Open Pageant 2010 instead. Just a thought. Hihihi...

Buen is known by everyone. That's how gays are here. They can run in public office and they would be sure winners, popularity-wise that is. Especially Buen. He seem to know everybody. We talked for a bit and then we saw a "peryahan" across the street. We went there and played. I lost twenty pesos in the "color game." There are three cube with each side colored. Then they are rolled on to a slanted plank. You place bets on which color you think will come up. You're lucky if all the dices come up with same color you bet on, you get triple the amount of your bet. Buen on the other hand tried his shooting skills. He was given a gun full with pellets for ten pesos. Everyone there, including the bystanders were cheeringfor him. He able to shoot 3 small plastic soldiers and as a prize was given one piece of Sky Flake biscuit which he later gave to a small kid behind him. Lol.

Buen aiming hard at the small targets

After the perya stint, we headed to a small sari-sari store (ain't sari-sari stores supposed to be smoall? Lol) and bought beers. I got SanMig Light while he did Red Horse while doing some poses for my almost-battery-empty camera.

Me drinking my first of two bottles for the night.

Me and Buen: Ang Mga Dayong Bakla sa Barangay Panique. Lol.

 

Me waiting for Buen to come out of the dressing room

After the beer, we watched the pageant. We stayed on the left side of the stage near the candidates' makeshift dressing area. It's a small area about 2x2 meters and was covered up to about 5 ft in height. You can see young and old men trying so hard to take a glimpse of the contestants inside. (ewww...mga mambobosa...)

There, I met some of Buen's gay friends who were also the handlers of the contestants. Then someone said to me, "Kuya Ian, si Kit to!" It was my friend's younger brother is now gayer than ever.

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Side Bar

 

I asked how much he makes being the handler of a contestant. Handlers do the make-up, prepare the costumes, and other things. It's hard work. Kit said the cut depends on how much the prize is and if the contestant wins or lose. That night the major prize was Php 5,000.00. The handler gets around Php 1,500.00 from that amount. The amount is higher if the gown and costumes came from the handler. Unfortunately, Kit's contestant did not win anything, not even a special award. He got Php 400.00. He said, "wala na namang pangchupa."

Buen, Kit and Me - The official cam whores of the night.

Kit and Buen - Tinalo pa yung mga contestants sa poses!

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There were 9 candidates which were trimmed down to 5. The five had their Q&A which the host said was a make or break. I noticed that the host loved to say the word "sophisticated." If I remember it correctly, he used the word to describe more than half of the contestants during the evening gown presentation. He would even use it with the word "simple" in one sentence. Kinda confusing... The answers of the contestants during the Q&A were also depressing.

Slouchy Ms. Panique 2009 came out in a yellow gown (Cory! Cory! Cory!) for her final walk before the winners were announced. After the awarding it was DANCE DANCE DANCE. People rushed to the dance floor, most of which were half drunk and were doing all sorts of no-care-in-the-world dance moves. Really entertaining.

My camera was really dead but I managed to take a few more shots before it totally said goodbye. Here they are.

Miss Panique 2010

Miss Panique 2010 First Runner-up

The night seemed to be going perfect until DISASTER happened...

*This post should been posted earlier at around 5am but the power went out. Thank God Blogger has been auto-saving everything...

Help me Win an iPod Nano!

Sal has been bugging me for two days now about this website where if you register you will get an iPod Nano. I am not really a believer of online promos as there are so many scams going on. He was really persistent and even gave specific instructions on what to do to register and to win the prize. Since I have nothing to do today I finally gave in. The website, according to him, is some kind of a networking site like Facebook and Frienster. The registration is really easy plus it does not require you to enter an email address, which is good because I get a lot of unwanted mails in my inbox everyday.

What I didn't know, and I think Sal intentionally did not tell me, is that for you to get the iPod, you'd have to refer people to the site. There are in total 20 iPods for grabs and Sal is already one of the 20 people so far. Competition ends on January 31, 2010 at 2:00am. The top 20 people who has the most referrals win. So far I ain't in the list yet so I am begging you people, help me win that freakin' prize. Hahaha... Click this link to register or click this: http://vk.com/reg67198402.


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Habol Lang....
Kadarating lang ni Papa (biological) from work. He and mom are elementary teachers. Galing ata si Papa sa ibat-ibang schools doing some rounds and while at it took pictures of the schools. He asked me to edit them or as he put it, "pagandahin ko raw." I told him I can't do anything with the pictures since they're relatively already good.

So I was browsing the album and I found this really funny photo of a bulletin board from some school he visited earlier. I won't mention the name of the school anymore because the last time I wrote something negative about a college in Quezon City, I received a lot of hate comments (I deleted the post already).

Here it is. Need I say more what the major error is?

A Reaction on Making a Reaction Paper (Huh?)

 brother runs a computer shop here in our province. Yes, I am currently on vacation here in Odiongan, Romblon. The cafe also offers typing jobs which his wife and my other younger brother helps him with. Since my parents are both teachers (I really don't know where my values went), they get a lot of typing requests. Mind you, this is the province and not all have computers at home or even know how to use them. So why am I telling you this? Here's why.

So I was doing my rounds of bloghopping hoping to get more traffic here like before when my brother approach me and asked for my help. He wants me to make a reaction paper for one of his customers, a college student. I readily accepted the job thinking that all I need to do was encode letters and words. To my dismay, he was actually asking me to MAKE THE REACTION PAPER MYSELF! I was like WHUAAAATTTT!!! Of course I refused. Then he offred me a bargain, I will watch over his kid while he does the reaction paper. I chose the more convenient one - DO THE DARN PAPER.

The students were asked to do a paper on the movie "Transformers: The Return of the Fallen." There were bullet points as to what should be in the paper - from introduction to summary to comments. It was really easy. I mean you can get everything from the internet nowadays. Of course I couldn't help but to put some of my personal inputs. Thanks to Wikipedia and IMDB.com I was to get some background. I finished the paper in less than an hour.

NOW, I RANT

What the hell is happening to our education system? To our students? It was like getting your thesis ready-made from Recto for a hundred bucks! I told my brother that he should not accept job offers like that because it wa an assignment assigned to the students. How will they know how to research on their own? I was really disappointed. I blame both my brother and the students. My brother because he tolerates the kind of behavior that diminishes students' supposedly skills and capability to do it on their own (Whitney?). The students because they rely so much on other people. What happens when they grow up and face the real world? People are not as nice and accommodating when you grow up. They will not be as patient and as helpful. Right?

So this goe out to all the students out there. Study hard. Rely mostly on yourself and don't ask my brother to research for you! Argh!

Enough of this. Might as well entertain this guy in my YM who's been buzzing me for the last 30 minutes. Ciao for now.

On Sex (or lack of) and Vacation

So today marks my 8th day here in the province. For those who don't know, I am currently on vacation after quitting work last month. Why quit work? That's a different story. What I want to blah about today is about how proud I am to have lasted this long without a fuck. Imagine, I'm going eight (8) long days without seeing beautiful naked bodies in front of me! Not in person, anyway.

There's a big difference between gay men here and in the metro. Gay men here are those cross-dressers and parloristas. You see them in the plaza, roaming the streets at night, flooding beauty contests and the likes. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against them. In fact, I admire their courage. Plus they're really fun to be with. Maybe there are discreet gay men here I just don't know about. It has been 7 years since I last went home anyways. I'm not really an authority when it comes to this town's history. Not for the last 7 years anyways.

There is also one more consideration before I go into a fuckfest here. My parents hold respectable jobs here and I am afraid if I do something very gay in nature that it'll break their hearts plus ruin their credibility. You see this town is so small that everyone's minding everybody's business. Everyone seems to be a umalohokan (refers to the town criers of ancient Philippines Barangay. They were responsible for going around and making people aware of new laws and policies enacted by the Datu or chieftan - Wiki). Everyone knows who the recent pregnant teen is, who killed who, whose husbands cheated on their wives, etc. Everybody' just into everybody. Hahaha...

So here are some pictures I have taken so far while on vacation. These are also in my Facebook.

Talk about natural fertilizers. Taken from our farm.

At the beach. IHeartBrew

A small crab and two clams (not sure).

My mom loves orchids. This is from her small garden.

My mom also has a fascination on cactus plants. Weird.

Hardcore Farmville. Lol.

At the beach.

Rizal sporting a set of red lips. Hehehe...

Catholic Church

You decide what I am doing halfway up a coconut tree. LOL.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures above. More pictures on my Facebook.

A Beauty Contest-Turned-Mini "Miting de Abanse"

Nice Makeup, right?

My mom was asked to judge in a pageant in a barangay where she and dad used to teach. Since I am here on vacation, I went with them.

It was about 3 kilometers from town, or so mom says. The road was awful. Some parts were cemented but the most of it was bare and there were no street lights you'd have to rely on your vehicle's lights. My dad says that it improved over the years. Compared to before, the road is more bearable now. I was gone for 7 years and what happened CANNOT be called an improvement.

The call time was 7pm and it was around 7:30pm when we got there. The event was going to be held at the barangay plaza. There were bleachers in front, plastic tables scattered around costing PhP200.00, disco lights in the middle of the place and a stage in front which was barely decorated. They used those silver paper plates as decorations and some pink curtains. The DJ was playing "Always"by Erasure released in the early 90s, plus songs in the era. It reminded me of the time when it was the town fiesta and "peryas" were all over. I would always play the "color game" where you place your bets in one (or more) of the 6 colors. There are 3 cubes which sides are colored differently and if the faces of the cubes comes up with the color you placed your bet on, you win the same amount you bet. You can say that I was addicted with the game back then that I would stay until the wee hours of the morning playing. One night, I lost my bicycle there and my mom and dad made me look thoughout town for it. I never found the bike.

It was around 10pm when the pageant finally started. Of course there was the Lupang Hinirang, prayer and opening remarks. The host was this gay guy who was my mom's student before. To be fair to him, he was good except when he says the word captain (which believe me, there were a lot) which he mispronounced as "cup-ten". Other than that he was fairly good. I am sorry to say but I kinda lowered my expectations as soon as I heard what the DJ was playing that's why it was relief to hear the host.

There were 5 candidates from different elementary batches. The pageant was Miss Alumni 2010. The youngest, I think was 18 and the oldest was 25. They competed for the special awards, minor awards and major awards. I placed my bet on contestant No.2. She's this petite girl with a really curly black hair and a beautiful little face (or at least that's how I saw hear from where I was seated). The competition was comprised of the talent show, Q&A, short shorts, casual wear and evening gown.

As expected, there were a lot of politicians around. From the Vice Mayor to the SK Chairman. Each had something to say. The guest speaker was this UP graduate who was saying about stopping corruption and helping fellow Odionganons. It was all good and inspiring if only not for his banners/posters all over the place. It sounded like a miting-de-abanse. There were also other barangay captains who gave off their speeches, both short and boring.

It was around midnight when we got home and I was really tired.