Mom and I tried to sing Janis Ian’s At Seventeen during last Saturday’s karaoke party but we couldn’t because we weren’t too familiar with the tune of the song. We recently discovered it while watching Entertainment Tonight when the singer was interviewed. A few days ago, I asked mom why she didn’t know that song since it was popular during her time. She answered that maybe she just didn’t notice it but added that most probably it’s because she couldn’t relate to that song since she was very popular and had many suitors back then. I wanted to give a smart retort but I couldn’t come up with anything so I just let it go. I like that song because I could relate to it so much.

When I was 17, I wasn’t popular with the boys. I wasn’t popular with the girls either. In school, I was pretty much a loner. I had a few friends but we couldn’t really spend much time with each other since it was a busy time, us being seniors after all. I felt so unloved during that time and I yearned for a boyfriend so much. Often I daydreamed that my crushes like me back and I would pretend that they always call me, send me presents and love letters, whisper sweet nothings, etc. I was still 17 when I was a college freshman and although I had more friends, my love life was still pretty much the same. Actually up to now but I’ve definitely moved on and don’t even think of that matter as a problem.

My experiences are so different from mom’s and my sister’s. Sometimes I wonder if they think there’s something wrong with me because I never lived the life they live. I bet they think that sometimes. Heck, there are times when I wonder about it myself. So up to now I can still relate to Janis Ian’s song although I don’t imagine or pretend that I have a boyfriend anymore.

I almost forgot to mention that I’ve already seen Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Phoebe suddenly called me on Friday night and asked if I wanted to do something so I suggested we see the movie. We got to Greenbelt just in time for the 12am screening and I was thrilled because the theater wasn’t packed.

I was crying with laughter from start to finish. The movie was hilarious, offending, and stupid. Just the way I wanted it to be. The most memorable part for me was when Borat and Azamat were fighting naked. It was disgustingly funny! I couldn’t believe Sacha Cohen actually did that. Another part was when Borat tried to bag Pamela Anderson. So fucking funny! I also loved his driving lesson. Actually I loved everything he did in the movie.

I hope there’ll be another Borat movie someday. I will definitely watch it!

Clean up your storage rooms for the holidays and the coming new year! Come to the Waste Market on December 8, Friday, from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm - Goldcrest Parking Lot, Ayala Center, Makati City (near Ansons Motorshop along Arnaiz Ave.) and sell/dispose the following items:

Non-traditional wastes
junk electronic and electrical equipment and appliances
CPU (complete/incomplete/case) and monitors
Printers, scanners, fax, telephone, etc
Motherboards, PC/telecom cards, printer/med grade boards, hard disk, power/monitor boards
Old/obsolete/broken Betamax, VHS, DVD players
Microwave ovens, toasters, gas range, stoves
Electric fans, water dispenser, electric pot, aircon, rechargeable lamps
Other office and household equipment and appliances
used ink/toner printer cartridges, dot matrix ribbon cartridges
used acid-lead of car batteries, UPS and rechargeable lamps
used/damaged cds, vcds, VHS, betamax, video/handy cam and radio cassette tapes
busted tiboli (Christmas) lights
used oil (for registration - do not bring to the area)
styrofoam (polystyrene) and other packaging materials (for donation)
cellphone and cellphone batteries (for donation only)

Traditional Waste

Used paper and cartons (newpapers, komiks, notebooks, reports, old test papers, phone directories, etc)
damaged/broken plastic furniture, containers,
bottles, etc. (anything plastic!)
Aluminum and tin cans (soda/food cans)
You can also exchange these traditional waste items to new products, such as 5.5 kilos of newspaper can give you 4 rolls of double-ply tissue paper, or 5 kilos of plastics or 1/2 kilo (30 pcs) of aluminum beverage cans can be exchanged with 1 dozen of hangers, and other trading promos that you can avail of.

These events are organized to help promote recycling in the Philippines. Also, by selling your junk or still useful waste to accredited recyclers, we lessen the amount of trash that go directly to landfills or illegal dumping/recycling. What better way to dispose of your junk at the same time help protect our environment.

The waste market is organized through the collaboration of Ayala Foundation, Ayala Center Association, Ayala Property Management Corp, Philippine Business for the Environment, Makati City LGU, National Solid Waste Management Commission and DENR.

For any questions, please call 752-1084/1178 (adel/tin/jess) or 635-3670/2651 (nancy).

DON’T BE A JUNKIE!!! Kick the habit of throwing away still useful materials.
Please pass on to your friends and associates.

It was my birthday yesterday and thankfully, I didn’t get depressed. My celebration started last Saturday when my office threw me a birthday party. It was great and I had fun. We had lots of food and we did karaoke. The party ended a little before 7 PM and I think everyone had fun. Yesterday, I celebrated it by going to Rockwell Mall to look for shoes. I couldn’t find any that fit though. Very frustrating but I didn’t let that get to me. Instead, I just went to Fully Booked and bought 7 books. Yeah, a lot! They didn’t cost me much though because I get 40% off on my birth month for being a cardholder. I bought the following books:

I’m particularly excited about The Illustrated Jane Eyre because it’s illustrated by Dame Darcy. She rocks! After Rockwell, mom and I had dinner at National Sports Grill in Greenbelt 3. We were supposed to dine at Mario’s but our made cooked paella for lunch so my paella fix was satisfied quite unexpectedly. My sister couldn’t come with us because she has tons of projects for school to finish. The dinner was still great though. We ordered calamares, San Francisco burger, and Patty Melt. I was given vanilla ice cream with sprinkles since it was my birthday. We also had free mud pie for using an HSBC credit card. We couldn’t finish all the food so we had them doggie-bagged, including the mud pie which melted.

I still have one more celebration to go and I scheduled it for Thursday since it’s a national holiday the next day. I only invited a few friends though. I don’t want a repeat of last year’s celebration when a lot of the people I invited didn’t show up for my party.

I got this from Yahoo News. So cute!

Ziggy the cat used up at least one of his nine lives after surviving for 17 days without food on a 2,300 mile voyage that took him from northern Israel to England.

The skinny white cat named after Ziggy Stardust — the character created by David Bowie in the 1970s, because like the rock star he has one green and one blue eye — made his epic trip as a stowaway in a 40-foot container.

His journey began when he wandered into a consignment of plastic goods which were then sealed in Afula in Israel and shipped from Haifa on October 31.

It ended when he emerged, exhausted, starving and dehydrated, at a warehouse in Whitworth in Lancashire on Friday.

“When the container was finally opened, staff unloading it got a real surprise when this fluffy white cat shot out,” said Colin Barton, the local authority’s animal health officer who helped capture Ziggy.

“I think he had probably used up some of his nine lives.”

The cat had not only survived but was able to resist capture for five hours.

“I think he was scared to death,” said James Ratcliff, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). “He’d travelled all that way and got to a strange country and ran for his life.”

Ziggy’s background or owners remain a mystery as he had no collar or microchip, but the RSCPA believe he is someone’s pet because he is so friendly. He will now stay in quarantine in Britain for six months as a precaution against rabies.

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

1001 Books To Read Before You Die

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Double – José Saramago
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Unless – Carol Shields
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Youth – J.M. Coetzee
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth

Being a supporter of Greenpeace Philippines, I was given the chance to attend their special screening of An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary on Al Gore’s quest to influence mankind to stop the ticking time bomb which is global warming.

I’ve seen a few National Geographic and Discovery Channel documentaries on its effect, some even warning life on earth will cease to exist in 50 years time if we don’t do anything about it. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore presents new studies showing that we will start to feel the extreme effects possibly just 10 years from now. Effects like more severe storms, intense heat, droughts, flooding, death of wildlife and vegetations, and the spread of epidemics among others.

Since the modern Western lifestyle can isolate us from one another, it is often difficult to forge meaningful connections. Self-protection and mistrust prevent us from reaching out to neighbors and peers, and we consequently feel like we don’t truly belong anywhere. Yet creating community can be as simple as reaching out within our own neighborhoods. To form the bonds that eventually solidify into long-lasting friendships, we must first be willing to rise above the walls of suspicion and doubt dividing us from the individuals who inhabit our neighborhood, block, or our building. We are taught from childhood to fear those we do not know, but community is as much a part of survival as safety. When we take a proactive approach, we can harmoniously unite our neighbors and build a network of support that contributes to the well-being of all involved.

Your overtures of community needn’t be complicated. If you are new to your neighborhood, sending letters of introduction to your closest neighbors can ensure that their curiosity about you is partly satisfied. Consider telling them a bit about yourself and how you plan to positively contribute to your locale, even if it is something as straightforward as planting attractive flowers in your window boxes. Or if others have recently moved in nearby, schedule some time to welcome them to the area. By doing so, you can calm any misgivings they have while demonstrating that your neighborhood is a nice place to live. It is much easier to meet people while outdoors, so try to take frequent strolls or sit on your stoop or porch if you have one. Say hello to people who pass by, and you will likely get to know your neighbors speedily. And one of the easiest ways to build a sense of community is to organize neighborhood projects and events that bring people together in service or in fun! .
Even if you have little in common with your neighbors, your proximity to one another can offer a wonderful opportunity to pursue new friendships and working relationships. You may not see eye to eye on matters of spirituality, politics, or lifestyle issues, but each of you understands that community helps people feel connected. As you grow to know and then to like one another, the city or town where you reside will truly become your home.

From Daily Om