Walking tour of Intramuros, a tiring day, the beginning of work.

Went on Carlos Celdran's walking tour of Intramuros this morning with Jeanne, Abby, Kate, and Aragorn. We met at McDo Philcoa at about 7:15 am, and arrived at Intramuros about an hour early for the call time of 9 am, so we had time to do some wandering around on our own, walking along the walls, taking pictures, basically acting like shameless tourists, which we were, I suppose. Managed to find our way to Fort Santiago in time, and a little while after we arrived, the tour commenced.

The tour itinerary consisted of Fort Santiago, the San Agustin Church (and museum), and Casa Manila. At various stops along the way, our good host provided funny, insightful commentary on the history of the walled city (or, perhaps the better term would be a compressed, at times rapid-fire, version of the history), which made the places we visited take on resonance and meaning.

All in all, it was a fun and worthwhile tour. If only all field trips were like this! Highly recommended. Details of this and his other tours (Binondo, Corregidor...) at his blog (the link above).



Afterwards, we rested our feet a bit and had lunch. Some vague notions of going to see a movie or bowling at Sta. Lucia East or somewhere appeared; somehow, some time later, we ended up having ridden all three train lines to arrive at Trinoma (or the Landmark foodcourt to be precise). Oh, indecisive commuting.

Found ourselves staying there until 6 pm, discussing the many Ex Libris things that needed discussing. For those keeping track, we had been together at this point for some eleven hours, making our clumsy way around the metro. (I admit I was too tired at the time to realize this.)

Great day, but I really must get some sleep soon. Training for work begins tomorrow! (7 pm to 4 am at Makati, argh. I thought the job was in Libis? Ngh. I'm not with Jeanne and her sister, to boot, their "wave" was assigned the 3 pm to 12 mn shift at Libis. Planning to try to fix the situation, if at all possible. Come on, universe, don't do this to me, please?)

Oranges, the summer job.

I seem to have taken a liking to oranges. Any kind, really. I only started eating oranges back when I went on that (probably ill-advised?) "Warrior Diet", which consisted of eating nothing but water and perhaps a few pieces of fruit during the day, then gorging at night after a daily exercise routine. (It made some sort of sense at the time. To be fair, it did get me to exercise. Somewhat.)

I like peeling the orange by hand, carefully breaking it into two intact halves, and eating segment by segment. Biting into the whole peeled orange, while interesting, is much too messy, and makes one feel rather like a monkey.

I love the smell of orange peel. After finishing the orange, I usually have some more fun folding the peel pieces outside in, squeezing the fragrant oil (juice?) out. (The fragrance can squirt out pretty hard, I've learned to be careful not to get any in my eyes. Eheh.) I think I kept one orange's worth in my backpack until the pieces dried up into leather (that was fun)

Okay, that's enough about oranges I guess.

It hasn't yet really sunk in that I'm going to be working at a call center for the next two and a half months or so. Have been getting rather tired of the whole lazy vacation routine, truth be told. The onset of work is actually timed perfectly to assuage the emerging guilt about not doing anything productive. I suppose when work gets into full swing I won't have much energy left for thinking about anything else upon getting home but sleep.

Tomorrow I should get the clutter from last semester cleaned up already. Hnh, yeah, right.

Well, this is sort of cheating, but I'm lazy, so:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/movies/14univ.html

Here is a review that I more or less completely agree with. If I had the time, capacity, and inclination to write a proper review of Across the Universe, this would probably be somewhat close to it. Okay, thanks, bye.

(My writer's conscience is assuaged, a bit, i.e., I don't know how to write reviews well, at the moment, I am so sorry, dear readers; here, look at something better.)

SSS, Across the Universe, etc.

Getting an SS number proved to be almost disappointingly easy; I went to a smaller SSS branch along EDSA and basically just walked in, filled in and submitted a form, and walked out employable.

Hung out a bit at Jeanne's (the branch I went to was walking distance from her place), then puttered around a bit at SM North and Trinoma waiting for the 1:45 showing of Across the Universe. (Had lunch at Banana Leaf: their roti was great, as usual.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was inventive, beautifully directed, and made interesting use of about twenty or thirty of the Beatles' songs. I'll have to agree that plot and characterization were a bit lacking, but I didn't really mind, I was having too much fun humming along (in my head) and gaping at the sometimes weird, sometimes whimsical, almost always engaging visuals. So what if the movie might come off as a string of music videos? They're music videos worth watching, anyway.

One of the most memorable moments of the film, and an illustrative one as well, came during the "Strawberry Fields Forever" portion. Jude, the workingman-turned-artiste, pins some strawberries to a white wall (in neat, bleeding rows) in reaction to the chaos that was the Vietnam war. The strawberries turn into bombs and grenades overlaid on war footage in the surreal dream-like sequence that follows.

On one level, the immediacy and visual quality coupled with the movie's earnestness about its (somewhat sentimental) subject matter draws you in. On another level, you may find yourself just shaking your head (well, you may, but I admit that I didn't). That is: some measure of suspension of disbelief, of musical-theatrical sensibilities is almost necessary to be able to appreciate the film.

The director Julie Taymor also directed Frida, which Jeanne tells me (I haven't seen the film myself) is made with the same careful composition. In any case, some quick googlework tells me that Across the Universe is a rather polarizing, love-it-or-hate-it type of movie, and well, I loved it, what more can I say?

Well to be honest I feel like I have more to say, but I would just be going over what details I remember, and it won't really be any fun for anyone but myself, so. Suffice it to say that if you approach the movie with an open mind and allow yourself to get caught up in it (ignoring for instance some awkwardness in the waves sequence near the beginning), it will prove to be a very good trip, indeed.

Announcement; wailing, gnashing of teeth, etc.

I am now officially a capitalist wage-whore. Only for the summer (until June 30). The pay's no great shakes, of course, especially to those of you who happen to be on the fast track to being, I don't know, capitalist geishas or courtesans of much higher privilege, but, hey, I'm still a wage-slave. I mean, it's still money.

Now I have a rather compelling reason to learn to drive and get a license before school starts: it'd be good if I had the option of driving to and from school and/or work during those few weeks of overlap.

Application was rather painless, apart from having to wait around almost the entire day. Started off at around 9 am, and finished by 7:30 pm. The total amount of time that each of us was actually doing anything would probably amount to, I don't know, less than two or three hours. I guess they're giving us good practice for the job itself (technical support representative for Siemens).

Woo! Contract signed already, no backing out now. Wish me luck, I'm hoping for a fruitful, even fun, experience.

The events of last Tuesday, and this summer in general

So how's the summer been? Well, lazier than usual, owing to my decision not to take summer classes anymore. I only have 24 units left to go through in my last year, anyway. Have been video-gaming and bumming around like a pro.

Last Tuesday was great. Had some bread and coffee (rather strong) at French Baker before going to UP for some ExL stuff in the morning, then after lunch Jeanne and I decided on the spur of the moment to see if they still rent out bicycles at the Quezon City Circle (because we had been talking about the things that we should know or learn: biking, driving, swimming, uh, dancing, and so on), which meant that we got to take the underpass from City Hall twice (on the way there and on the way home), and it was still rather clean and pretty.

It also meant that we got to (or, well, I got to, mostly) fail at learning how to ride a bicycle for a hundred bucks an hour, in the omgwtfbbq heat. Also found out that the base of the monument in the center of the Circle is a (free entrance) museum detailing Manuel Quezon's life and times and death; his mausoleum is also there, which was interesting in the way a lot of mausoleums are - one finds oneself half-expecting bats to break through the skylight (nevermind that it was broad daylight) and some meta-camera to do crazy pans and turns to appropriately sinister music. (Blame Hollywood.)

Hung around for a bit at the Landmark foodcourt afterwards before going home, finding out that, hey, getting sushi in a bucket for cheap is not a very good idea. Never again, you people who give sushi a bad name. Fruit Magic's flavored soy milks, on the other hand, are pretty good, and come in cool glass bottles.

Okay, time to settle into another lazy day. (I'll start being productive when summer classes are supposed to start. Yeah, that's it.)

Oops.

Yeah, the previous post's layouting went all haywire. Too lazy to fix it. Sorry, and we thank you for your continued patronage.

- Management

Before and after: for people who have not yet beheld my shaved head.

Yeah, yeah, I was going to magically GIMP the images together, but obviously the lighting's way off, and, well, I tried, but I was too lazy and not well-versed enough to be able to do it properly, so I just gave up. (It wouldn't have been worth it, really, anyway.)

Oh, and I noticed just now, but I'm not wearing my glasses in either picture. Strange. With glasses, well, we get the pictures below.

I think my default look has been turned from "haughty" to "slightly goofy"? Or, I don't know. What I do know is that there's some sort of silliness correlation to be found somewhere, which is either a good thing or a bad thing.