in limbo

the song i'm loving now

posted by: cleng at March 10, 2005 14:29 | link | comments (1) |

i love this piece. for everyone that is madly inlove with love, or at least  want to feel good, take time to read it.

i give it to carlo ledesma, the one who wrote this, for being so brave (yes, brave is the word), for writing such a mushy piece. no wonder he's been featured from time to time in girl magazines.

i so can relate to the shopping, and to a certain extent, i think i have my own carlo ledesma and im proud of that fact. although relationships can still evolve, its not necessarily a bad thing. i've learned to live my own life and still be secure and okay.

so here. enjoy

thanks to mafey for the email

SHOP UPLIFTER

by Carlo Ledesma

Sex And The City.

Because of you, women everywhere feel the need to duplicate Miranda,
Charlotte, Samantha, and Carrie, and wear whatever it is you bestow
on the new Fab Four, including those absurd pinup roses that look like
mutilated corsages. The fact that you are a weekly show makes it
worse, as we men have no other option but to follow our significant others around as they stake out the malls for the pumps Carrie used in the last episode.

Because of you (and countless other media influences), we boyfriends
are a zombified lot slapping our faces to stay awake, our patience,
sanity, and ATM cards being pushed to the limit as we endure the most painful torture  of all: SHOPPING.

Sigh. I don't know why women love to shop. It's been around from the
moment  cavemen returned home with furs for their wives, who in turn
liked the idea of wearing dead animals so much they wielded their own
 clubs and went out looking for more. I believe this is the real reason why mastodons and sabre-toothed tigers are extinct.

Now don't dismiss me as a "caveman" just yet. I do accept that as
humans,  we are all entitled to whatever makes us happy. And while
women baffle us  with their zest for shopping, it's easy to flip the
picture and find several examples of male behavior that perplex women.
Spending thousands of pesos to have cars lowered, for one. (Personally, even I don't get this.)

It's just that hard as I've tried to enjoy shopping, I never could
bring myself to the level of euphoria my girlfriend seems to reach
whenever she manages to score an elusive pair of leather pants that
are marked down 30%.

Maybe it's because my concern for fashion has long upped and gone,
residing with the oversized Polo shirts and topsiders that gather
dust in my closet. As I grow older, I am gradually accepting the
unimportance of haute couture in my life. I just feel there are other important things for me to do now,  like finally coming around to finishing Syphon Filter 2.

I also can never find a scientific explanation as to why I, as an
athlete, can run 25K and yet be worn out in less than 15 minutes
while
walking around the Greenhills bangketa. I honestly believe that
Eco-Challenge adventure racers, for all their superhuman endurance,
would crumble from the perils of of being caught in the middle of a Folded & Hung clearance sale. Thank God for...

The Boyfriend Seat

What gets my vote as Best Invention In The World Next To Velcro And
Britney Spears is (drum roll please) THE BOYFRIEND SEAT. Somewhere
down the line, a brilliant architect, obviously male, decided to toss a
few clothes racks aside and proceeded to place sets of chairs for
world-weary beaus to sit their world-weary butts. Whoever invented The Boyfriend Seat must be found and commended, with a statue in his honor erected in front of Rustan's.

The Boyfriend Seat is where we men get relegated to for what seems
 like days on end while our honeys attack the clothes racks in a whirling
dervish, hoarding tons of clothes into the fitting room short of
employing the use of small tractors. What's really hilarious is how
men try to look unbored while in this corner. The classic move is to whip
out the trusty cellphone and start to text, thus having the perfect excuse to not make eye contact with the other 10 shmoes sharing the same sad fate. A girl's voice calling out "Hun?" sends all heads quickly turning in the same direction, hope turns to disappointment as only one guy walks away relieved,  the rest breathe a collective sigh of despair, still waiting, waiting, waiting.

It's tough being a boyfriend.

The legend of Ukay-ukay

My freshest shopping memory takes place 5000 feet above sea level-in
Baguio, to be exact. I was accompanying my girlfriend Mel to what
shopping purists call Ukay-Ukay, a mythical place where the most
hardcore shopaholics pay homage, a land where clothes are as cheap as
they can get, where 50-peso Armani sweaters and 200-buck New Balances
abound. Where Ukay is, I'm not at liberty to say. (Mel made me swear not to mention its exact location.) All I'm allowed to reveal are cloudy
descriptions of how my Ukay experience went:

Ukay is like a labyrinth. Mark your entry point with string and don't
let go or risk getting lost for all eternity. Everything smells old and
dusty, like those forgotten stuffed toys on top of your sister's
cabinet. Asthmatic boyfriends should come prepared with gas masks.

My girlfriend wove in and out of the stalls expertly, her trained eye
flitting from rack to rack. She was always on the move, only pausing
occasionally to closely examine a piece of clothing that struck her
fancy. I was impressed by my girlfriend's surgical precision; she
reminded me of a cunning Great White circling its prey. I, on the
other hand, felt like a lowly remora, tagging along next to this
magnificent creature, doomed to simply follow and do its bidding (in this case,carry the shopping bags).

 Amidst the sea of wool caps and mittens, I spotted a pair of worn jeans
that I thought looked pretty cool. My opinion, of course, holds no
credibility in the fashion world whatsoever, so I asked Mel what she
thought. Imagine my surprise when she looked up and said, "Hey,
that's nice. Try it on."

Now mind you, me picking up a piece of clothing on the first go and
having my girlfriend deem it cool is as unlikely as Shaq going
perfect on the line. I tried it on, liked it, Mel liked it-so I asked for the price.

"500," said the stall owner. Not bad, I figured, since it was quite a
nice pair, fit well, gave the illusion that I had an ass, and even
bore a well-known brand that would've made the jeans cost the equivalent
of a mid-sized luxury car back in Manila.

"Sold!" I said.

"Mahal!" cried Mel. Whoa! Now I do understand that 500 is a lot of cash
but I didn't think it was a steep price to pay for a nice pair of
vintage jeans.

"Just be quiet and let me try to get it down to 300, at least," Mel
instructed in a murmur. A one-minute haggling flurry ensued, neither
party  giving ground. I stood silent in the middle, watching the
operatic verbal  exchange. Finally, Mel pulled me away.

"Too expensive," Mel said. "Don't get it."

And it was then when I learned Ukay Lesson Number One: It is OK to
spend 1 month's salary in Mango, but it is sacrilege to spend the equivalent of a prepaid callcard on a pair of pants in Ukay.

"It's a matter of pride, Carl," Mel said soothingly, like Yoda to
 Luke.
"It's not just about buying whatever you want in Ukay, it's the
satisfaction of knowing you got it at the cheapest possible price."

We sank deeper into the human ant farm, and I sensed that I was
cramping Mel's style. My tourist vibe was just a little bit too
obvious and was working against her advantage; people were hiking up their prices because of me and how I looked. (Carlo Ledesma is a tad too maputi, FYI-ed.)

The last straw was when a lady called out to me, "Buy shirts, Joe, 10
dollars only!" and off I was sent to the street to stand and wait.

It was during this moment of solitude in the crisp Baguio air that I
realized Lesson Number Two: Men aren't supposed to understand why
women shop!

Men do equally silly things, if not sillier. My girlfriend patiently
endures the many fads that breeze in and out of my life: rock
climbing, Tamiya cars, PlayStation, my gadget of the month, me wanting to keep assorted amphibians in my room. All throughout these phases she's
done nothing but cheer me on during my competitions, beat me consistently
in Gran Turismo, and lie on my lap while helping me understand the
instruction manuals for a new gizmo. (It was a them-or-me ultimatum when it came to the amphibians, though.) At this point, I felt a tinge of guilt because even if my girlfriend didn't completely understand the things that made me happy, she at least made an effort to try. And that's more than good enough.

I had just absorbed that warm thought and was about to reenter Ukay
with renewed vigor and sincere enthusiasm when Mel surprised me by
coming out to meet me. She had a smile on her face and was holding up
a plastic bag.

"Got you something," she said. "For being so patient."

Inside was a pair of old New Balance sneakers, worn out in the
perfect way only Ukay can, haggled down to a price that I'm sure I couldn't have brought it down to, even if I haggled for a week. I loved it.

C'mon," my girlfriend said. "I saw an electronics store along
Session Road. Maybe we can find some DVDs for you there."

 As we walked up the road, my shoulders cramping from the weight equal
to a small boutique in the plastic bags I was carrying, I finally
learned Lesson Number Three. The reason why women endure men and all
our fancies is the exact same reason why we men endure women and theirs.

Because we love 'em. And that's a fact of life that's been around way
longer than shopping

posted by: cleng at March 10, 2005 13:49 | link | comments |

 the biggest fight of the century happened this week. mars and venus went full force at war, and seem to be a thousand miles apart and a million ways so different from eavh other. the activity of the stars was out of whack. hay, hay, hay. hehe thank God its all over. grabe talaga. grabe.

posted by: cleng at March 05, 2005 16:56 | link | comments |

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