My Wireless Brain

Last night’s encounter with friends made me a lot more frustrated about being unemployed – the very thing that everyone thought wouldn’t happen to me as soon as I graduated from college with a Magna cum laude citation. I didn’t think I’d feel depressed, too, over 12-hour sleeps and eat-chat-watch TV routines. The first few weeks of the graduation hangover had nothing in comparison. The long rest was a long overdue self-reward. And then, when an SMS or a PM on FB arrived, there were no giving second thoughts on going out with pals to share fantasies over icy cups of Oreo Frappe about becoming gazillionaires or husbands of Carnival performers in Rio. Eventually money runs out, I realized. I spent my paycheck (way back from my part-time bartending job in Le Chef in Camp John Hay) on clothes and food, sometimes uncontrollably like in situations that called for heavy spending. There was that one time I had no choice but to spend 600 pesos for dinner in a fancy restaurant. Somehow, the feeling became trance-like the minute the big bills started pouring out of the once bulky wallet. Those were the days.

Now, I’m poorer than a mouse.


Here's a snap of me playing restaurant manager in a dining service competition in Baguio Country Club. My teammates and I won silver. No one snatched gold.

Although I have with me my mom and dad at home, the feeling’s different when I ask for money. There’s a trace of guilt now. I could be paying the house bills this month if only I had scouted for a job earlier – when I finished my last three units in school. There were just too many things I was scheduled to do for May – none of them would have benefited if I had a job. As if depression wasn’t enough, as of last night I began feeling upset, too, over the idea of majority of my batchmates having jobs, if not, just something to keep their selves busy with. Before I slept last night, I thought: “Man, I could’ve skipped an hour playing Special Forces with my buddies for a minute of fishing employment contact persons from my instructors.”

I can’t deny that I’ve never chosen a preferred career path. I’m not even sure if I love the course I graduated from. The truth of it is people who graduate from my course either land in a waitering or commis career then get a scanty, ignorable, 5-bucks-a-day salary for a job-well-done. Reality bites hard. And then, as soon as they’ve worked their a**es off and get to the point of having a more dignified occupation nearing promotion, they quit and strive to land in an entry-level job abroad, repeating the tedious process once more. I, myself, am a candidate for that kind of fate.

Still, I’m crossing my fingers (my toes, even) for something good to happen soon. Who knows, I might really end up dancing in Rio as soon as this nightmare of a phase comes to a close.

I never thought six heaping cups of brewed Sagada coffee could be as punishing as a six-pack. The consequence was austere – more like out-of-this-world (I mean, my head was spinning!) and the trying-to-get-some-sleep part was as equally tormenting. I had to go to bed at 3:30 a.m. after an hour in front of the TV, then listening to “Maiden with the Flaxen Hair” on my radio to get a shut eye. It’s at the moment I started feeling the weight of my eye lids and began noticing my body stop to tremble from all that caffeine that I knew I was closer to a deep, soothing, slumber. In my case, sleep got to me past 4.

Then the alarm clock rang!

I almost jumped right out of my bed. “7:15,” my glowing-in-the-dark Spongebob clock read. I forgot to turn it off. Stupid. Then the sleeping went on.

I remember vividly why my friend, Dexter, and I tried to go all-out on a coffee drinking spree. I sent Dex an SMS early morning (before the coffee brouhaha) asking him if he wants to apply in a job fair in Baguio City, something about Holland-America Cruise Lines. Ate Evee, my former Editor-in-chief in college, told me the other night that the shipping line was to stage a job fair in Hotel Veniz, a 9-kilometer stretch away from my house. I told her, “I’ll think ‘bout it”. So there, we’re back to the scene where I texted Dex the morning after (got you confused there, right?). Dex, in a few ways, is just like me – unemployed and always looking for something to do. Several minutes after I sent him the message, he replied, “What time?”

Dex and I met in the lobby of Hotel Veniz. I found him standing there right by the doorway, browsing through the decors of the hotel (something I thought was strange since he could have seated himself and read a magazine instead while waiting for me). And you know the first thing he told me? “Look at that guy, he’s small.” For a Filipino dude, Dex is pretty tall standing near 5’9”. Still, that (or he) was strange. We approached the first guy we saw on the fourth floor of Hotel Veniz. What the heck, he had an ID of some sort so we asked him where to submit our resumes. The disappointment began there. The guy looked at us sternly, took out a flyer, raised his ring finger, and then pointed to a huge tarpaulin. It read: “Applicants must be at least 22 years old”. BUMMER. Ate Evee never told me that one.

Our knees felt numb, so Dex and I seated ourselves on a wooden bench near the registration table, looking at “THE LUCKY ONES”. All that dressing up with a full business get-up, all that hassle, and all that money spent for the long jeepney ride, wasted. Oh, and did I mention, I shaved my kiddy beard (which I let grow for 5 months! 5 LONG MONTHS!). Still, we had to drag ourselves up and go somewhere. I thought of Café Veniz, drew a 50-peso bill from my wallet then told Dex, “Hei, wanna grab some coffee – bottomless?” And there started our 4-hour coffee session.

The first step off that coffee shop was crazy! Everything was twirling in circles. To top it all off, I realized I had no more cash so I had to walk uptown to SM City Baguio for my granny’s diapers.

Until now, early Saturday morning, I can still feel the coffee hangover. Wait… got to do something.



*flush*

Well it's my first blog here and I had trouble figuring out what goes where when I made it to blogspot. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately, most of them on the "Blogs of Note" list. Someday I'll make it there. Someday.

The rotational brownout here in Benguet just passed, apparently the El Nino phenomenon here beat the water supply of our hydroelectric power source not too far away. I live in a high-altitude town called La Trinidad, near the American-designed Baguio City, but the heat's finally getting to my nerves. Lately, I've been so stressed out about the Manila-like temperature here. I got news before the blackout that Manila recorded its highest temperature yet in a decade, 37.5 degrees.

Before anything else, here's an update before I start posting things:

The best part of 2010 is my college graduation. That's me in the middle with open palms. If you look closely I don't exactly look like a college grad in this photo. Bear with it. I'm 5'5" and I just turned 20 last February. I took a bachelor's degree then graduated with a Magna cum laude honor, something I was shocked to learn from my department head early April.




Immediately after graduation day, I went touring in Manaoag, Pangasinan with some of my closest college buddies. There we slept in a nipa hut complete with nipa beds and nipa pillows. After a dip in a pool near Manaoag church and a heavy dinner, we went back to Baguio and looked for jobs.








After a few days, I met with several friends way back from Elementary days at Kalei's Bar and Grill near Baguio City. We spent the night telling stories and teasing the guys about their love life. Man, they looked matured now. Some of them looked really cute, some seemed smart.


Then the latest: Three of my closest cousins from Manila came for a visit here in Baguio City. That was fun, fun, fun! Yeah, I miss them a lot. That was the most fun I had in months. They stayed at our house for three days. On afternoons, me and my brothers toured them around Baguio City; from Burnham Park to the famous haunted Diplomat Hotel.


That about wraps it up. In the following days, I hope I can post a lot of stuff here. Watch out!