Of tea bags and artificial sweeteners.

I am writing this piece as a form of cathartic release from the bondage of being pressed into writing stuff that will never be credited to me. Not that I am claiming that I am a good writer or anything, but I do write for a living. I do not even know if this can be precisely classified as writer’s block, since I have not stopped writing per se. It’s more like: I’m not happy with what I am writing anymore.

Right now, I feel like that hollowed out stub of a candle that has burned out its wick after days, weeks, and months of doing the same thing over and over. I mean, there is only a small amount of joy to be had, after being stuck behind the computer almost every minute of the day… focusing on words that seem perpetually redundant, while trying to block out stupid noises from the neighbors.

(Hello? Mr. Owner Of The Icky Yellow Brick House, can you not use your sanding machine at 6:04 in the effing morning?)

I certainly cannot blame the muses for deserting me at this critical time. In fact, I think they are working extra hard to let me know that they are there. I have now resorted to an old practice of keeping a small notebook and pen on me all the time. This is so that any idea – no matter how sane or outlandish – gets noted down for later scrutiny. Even the very short amount of sleep I get is pervaded by visions, dialogues and sounds. All of them are in moving colors, similar to clips of movie trailers from which I can derive a grain of thought for a story or an article.

(Hello? Mrs. Landlady From Hell, will you and whoever Devil you are talking to, please tone down your voices by about, oh, let’s say 20,000 octaves? Because I can assure you, no one wants to hear all about your problematical husbands and their er, uhm, hmm, shortcomings.)

I think my main hurdle to overcome is the fact that there is no cohesion in my thoughts these days. There are simply too many ideas and worries going through my head all at once. Whatever spare moment I have for “relaxing,” I infuse it with printed words from the pages of a book (damn, I’m still on page 76 of Love In The Time Of Cholera) or listening to audio books (Chapter 18 of Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban.) And as a form of conversation, I text my sister or go Plurk-ing. Both of which do not require much cohesion or any sense for that matter.

I am not even counting the hopelessly, helplessly ego-deflating forwarded texts and messages from my email and SMS.

(Hello? Mr. / Ms. Forwarded Message, we hardly ever talk, and you probably have not seen me for a year or more, and all you can give me is a message that has been floating forever in the virtual world that no one really cares to read anyway. And then, to rub salt into my wounds, you expect me to text or email it back? Eff!)

And admittedly, I do peruse the various online shopping sites and my Ebay page when things get too redundant.

(Gah! Those shoes are now on sale! Only 900! Gah, it’s only available in size 11. Size 11? Eff! Eff! Eff! According to the charts, I wear a size 5.5. Gah. Size 11? That’s longer than my face! Puck.)

So yeah, now I am trying freestyle writing again, while focusing on the floating specters of visions and thoughts I am having. And I am not doing it on the computer either. I have this obsessive compulsive tendency to edit anything I write, or correct the spelling of red lined words, or choose thesaurus alternatives for mundane texts, and the lot.

I hope I overcome this writer’s block soon, because this is somehow morphing into a chopping block for me. And I won’t mind dragging along some of my noisier neighbors and their “shortened” husbands too.

(Gah!)

I held my silence for as long as possible. So to my friends who have not yet watched the aforementioned movie, and you plan to enjoy yourself when you do; then I highly recommend that you close this window and get on with your life.

Otherwise, I firmly believe that you are exactly like me: sorely… sorely… sorely miserable after watching the movie. The truth is: I got bored halfway through it. Apparently, the multi-million budget of HBP all went into special effects. Musical scoring was totally forgotten, editing was major crap and the screenplay was as disjointed as the limbs on a badly handled marionette.

I mean, I cannot believe that I spent almost half a year waiting for this major crap of a movie. It looked like a solid mishmash of un-funny scenes that does not explain what is going on with the story or un-cool scenarios that are supposed to reflect the huge amount of money wasted on the entire production. Plus, major parts of the books were totally disregarded or changed… which I know is normal in book adaptations but still!

They added scenes that are sooooooooo contrived that it was a major pain in the butt. I mean: that scene where the Burrow was burned by the Death Eaters… WTF was that? They could’ve deleted those scenes and dedicated more to the really essential parts of the book. For Pete’s sake! (Not that I know anyone named Pete, by the way) I was expecting for that scenario where the rest of the DA finally confronted the Death Eaters during D. Malfoy’s and A. Dumbledore’s final word sparring. Now that! That would have been more exciting.

The kissing scene in the room of requirements? Blah. The Quidditch tryouts and match? Blah. The scene with the young Tom Riddle in the orphanage. Blah.

All I can say is: the movie trailer is much more exciting than this piece of crap. Makes you wonder though. If this movie is bad, what the heck can we expect from the next 2 movies that are supposed to be installments of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? I’m not really looking forward to it anymore. So much so, I am officially removing my HP wallpaper from my Plurk page.

So there.

So maybe I am not exactly in the classification of “normal.” Yes, I think of myself weird. In fact, I think I’m right there in the highest level of weird, swinging with my prehensile tail and happily jabbering to myself about conspiracies involving why certain expensive face powders look like gunk, why nail paints look so much better when a lady boy manicurist applies it, and why the hell Nenuco baby cologne smells sooo darn sour. But I never really realized how weird I was until I finished writing this piece. (And the only reason why I begun writing this admittedly shitty piece is because the 3 Urban Legend movies are scaring the major crap out of me.)

So here is a list of things that proclaim wholeheartedly and unabashedly that I am sub-normally, somewhat near the vicinity of, and irrevocably deranged… I mean, weird.

10. I can never curl my hair. This is a major source of argument between my mother and me. Up until my fourth year in elementary school, she would try vainly to curl my locks, even taking me to the parlor on a weekly basis, and making me sleep with those dratted plastic rollers in my hair. True, they would turn out all wavy and bouncy after several hours of treatment but give me twenty minutes, and my hair would be as straight as before. Honestly, I don’t do anything to my hair. My locks are just stubbornly straight… always have and I guess, always will be.

9. I love to cook a lot but I dislike eating my own meals sometimes. Yeah, I can cook up a storm – a skill instilled by my mother who cooks 4 kilos of meat per serving and hoping with all fervent hope that the rest of the family consumes everything… including the side dishes, and maybe 2 or three other meals she has prepared. You can place me in the kitchen for 1 hour and I can whip up a feast easily. And everyone swears that I cook extremely well. But after all that cooking, do not expect me to share the feast. I’d rather go out and buy any cholera-inducing street food fare. I’m cheap. What else can I say?

8. I love shopping … alone. It does not matter if I am on retail therapy or pulling down stuff for my grocery list. I would rather shop alone. For starters, no one gets “shocked” as to how much money I spend. Hey, I live in a cave and I enter the domains of pseudo-civilization about once a month… twice at the most, so give me a break. Yeah, I spend a lot of money, and I take my sweet Bejebers time about it too. I hate shopping with someone who always exclaims, “How much is that? That’s expensive. Are you buying that? That’s expensive. There are CHEAPER products out there. That’s expensive.” I have two words for you: “Shut it.”

7. I like multi-tasking… as many task as possible. On a regular day, I may be doing several articles all at once, while watching and reviewing one movie + one documentary at the same time, while having something on the boil on the stove. On more hectic days, I can triple up that volume, while doing the laundry, washing the dishes and even cleaning house during bathroom breaks, food breaks, scratching my head / mental block breaks, and maybe even tolerating one or more forms of harassment from LFH, a.k.a. landlady from hell. According to my sister, this is of the slowest forms of suicides. I have to agree.

6. I cannot survive without paper towels, bathroom tissues, table napkins, facial tissues, toilet tissues and the lot. I carry a small pack with me everywhere I go, aside from the large handkerchief I have with me when I go out of the house. I use it everywhere and for everything. I seriously cannot go about my day if I know I am running low on supplies. I feel irritated and even prone to violence (I pluck my eyebrows with fury) if I can’t find any in some of the places I go to. That is basically why I hate restaurants that do not offer free paper napkins, or skimp on these when they serve their food. Grrrr…

5. I cannot sleep on an unmade bed, or a bed with all manner of stuff scattered on top of the bed sheet. My mother can, which irritates the living Beelzebub out of me. My sister laughs at me sometimes when she finds me up in the middle of the night, redoing my bed. Any kind of wrinkle on the sheets keeps me up, but I also cannot sleep without bed sheets. The only things I want on my bed are my 2 pillows and my stuffed toy named Doug. Needless to say, this is the reason why I never use blankets, or share beds with anyone. If I took a book with me to help me sleep, it inevitably ends up on the floor. A friend of mine asked me once, what happens when I have bf over? Uh, duh! Can anyone really get a good night’s sleep with a bf over, especially if he looks, smells and feels like Josh Groban? Aahahahahahahaha.

4. Speaking of stuffed toys, yeah I have several with me. I did not mean to collect them, but my family buys them for me. My favorite is Doug Ong, a really huggable dugong (manatee) stuffed toy which my Dad gave me. In other cases, I get free stuffed toys when I do my retail therapy. Yeah, that is one of the advantages of spending a lot of money in one go. They give you freebies, and you even get to choose which ones you want to take home.

3. I eat siopao, but only the filling. I discard the bread which my mother thinks is pretty wasteful. True. She once bought me siopao filling, so that I have no bread to throw away. Believe me. It did not taste the same. By the way, I found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siopao. I was actually trying to find the English term for this food item, but apparently, it has no direct English translation. The closest one is steamed filled bread. Eh?

2. I remove products from their packaging and place them into plastic containers. Of all the things I hate, seeing opened packages or badly wrapped food items on kitchen countertops, in cupboards or anywhere near the kitchen is right there on my top 10 shit list. I mean, hello? There are contaminants in the air. If someone sneezes on your exposed and uncooked spaghetti noodles, the bacteria will most likely remain there until you cook it. Even if you argue that heat will kill the bacteria, what makes you so sure that you are not cooking the snot or booger that came along with that sneeze? Eeewww! Now, imagine if you actually left your cookies exposed on the kitchen countertop.

1. I hate carrying conversations on public transportations. It’s not that I am being impolite to whoever it is I am with on the bus or the jeep. And I do answer and listen to my companion when the situation calls for it; but I would really rather not. I hate foisting my conversation on people who do not want to listen in to our conversation, because seriously, I do not wish to be in their place. At the same time, I hate people openly and surreptitiously eavesdropping on me. But what gets my goat is an unknown stranger suddenly jumping in with his or her opinion like I was supposed to care.

That’s it for now. I’ll have a longer list once I get some of my pending assignments done.

Okay, so yeah. I was all into the hype and buzz of the movie. Even with a seemingly endless pile workload, I prettied myself up for the long commute to the city. I checked the movie listings and I knew I could make it just in time for the opening show in one of the theaters here. I thought the day started out pretty much okay. I mean, I did not have to stand for 10 ungodly minutes before I hailed the first habal-habal (motorbike taxi) to take me to the highway. And I only waited another 10 minutes more before a passing jeepney came along. I used to wait for 20 or so minutes. Also, the ride I took was pretty decent. The driver was not in the mood to stop by every corner in order to wait for passengers to appear from out of the ground. The supposed hour long commute was cut in half, which was a pretty good thing for everyone on the jeep.

And just this once… just this once… I decided, to hell with my diet. I’ve been craving for ice cream and pizza for almost 3 weeks now, and it was gnawing at me like a thong stuck twisted between my cheeks, er… back down there. So I bought a couple of slices of pizza, a pint of Rocky Road ice cream, and several other snacks I knew would give my nutritionist a heart attack if she ever found out. And then I went to the theater to catch the first movie showing of Transformers 2 for that day.

The maxim goes: you learn something new everyday. I was guiltily nibbling on a slice of pizza when I felt knowledge descend upon me like an unannounced fart from someone standing in front of you. Or maybe, it was due to my incurable ability to take notice of the littlest, most inconsequential things around me. Or maybe I just have a short attention span. Anyway, here are some things I learned during that time, which I am willfully passing on to you – whether you like it or not.

6. Get to the theaters early. For some unknown reason, they won’t let you into the theater anymore when the movie starts. I know… I know. This rule should have been implemented ages ago. But for many people who usually come in late and then wait for the next showing of the movie to catch up on the parts they missed, this is impossible with T2. Check your local movie listings for show dates. It will do you a lot of good. Fortunately, I did! Haha!

5. Prices spiked. I mean from 85 pesos to 95 pesos here in Davao. That may not be much but still, if you are counting on each and every peso you plan to spend in the mall, this sudden price hike may catch you off guard. The 3 teenagers who were buying their tickets ahead of me faced this dilemma… and it took them a loooooonnggg while to decide that they can’t afford the tickets after all. And yeah – you can shoot me in the head for not trying to help them out. Kebs ko ba?

4. Sit in the lower part of the movie house. Orchestra or balcony? That is the question. Ahahaha. I actually heard some of the oldies on the ticket line asking for balcony tickets when all the seats are priced the same. Anyway, I think getting seats in the “balcony” section of the movie house is so overrated. As soon as you get comfortable, or as soon as the story becomes interesting, or as soon as a great piece of action in the movie blazes on-screen, some ƒπεακ will suddenly stand up to go to the bathroom, or try to sit on the free seat beside you, or ask something as inhumanly stupid as: are you my blind date? Pucha. All this are part of my conspiracy theory that there are forces unknown that prohibits anyone from watching a movie on the “balcony” side uninterrupted. That is why I always sit in the lower section of the theater house and away from the aisles. This way, I get to watch the movie for every second of my money’s worth.

3. It really pays to buy popcorn, especially the cheapest and the greasiest kind. They make the best projectiles especially here in Davao, where I have yet to enter a movie house that does not allow some sorry assed, uncultured swine from talking too loudly inside during the entire movie. For T2, I was several rows away from a pair of hell bent offenders, which would make popcorn throwing futile. My aim is not that good you know, unless of course, if you offered me a bazooka or something. Fortunately, the guy right behind them had more common sense that I do, and he huffed off to get the security guard and had both fuglies thrown out. Bravo!

2. Be on the extra lookout for perverts on the prowl. Aha! I used to think that this only happened in Manila. Apparently, there are pervs here too. I already saw this guy snaking his way towards some of the seats where groups of girls sat waiting for the movie to start. He would sit beside one of them and start a conversation of sorts. After a few minutes, the girls would stand and sit as far away from this guy as possible spewing off some very colorful remarks. And then the guy (cheap blue shirt, extra dusky looking skin wearing a cap that says B-Meg, which I found totally hilarious) starts creeping up towards the group of girls occupying the last two aisle seats in my row. They started threatening the man (I swear, Davaoeños have such splendid vocabulary,) and then they started throwing bits of paper at him. I threw popcorn at him for good measure. Did I not say buying popcorn pays off? Wala lang, nakiki-epal lang.

1. Try not to be too critical of the film. After all, they are not running in contention for any film award you know of. Making movie reviews for a living instilled in me this stupid almost automatic response. And yes, there are editing lapses in the film, not to mention too many twists in the storyline that makes you wonder WTF is going on na. Plus, there was that CPR-defibrillator thing that drove me nuts. I mean, the guy dies from shrapnel injuries (as evidence by the holes in the shirt afterwards) and you perform CPR with the pre-requisite defibrillator follow up? Where’s the blood? You cannot be seriously wounded by alien fire without the blood, right? Wish there was more blood… to make it look more authentic; or at least some bandages that imply that someone tried to staunch the flow of blood from the shrapnel injuries.

I mean, I want realism in this sort of movie. I want some sort of footnote that will explain as to who will pay for ruining the Ancient Egyptian ruins. And when was the Pentagon moved to Washington DC, and why the heck did I not know about it? I also want a pair of white jeans similar to female lead actress, which in my book is great, since the jeans can be dragged across the globe without one single smidgen of dirt on it afterwards.

This! This is the reason why my nutritionist prescribed a no-processed sugar / food diet! Sugar rrrrrruuuuuuuussssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Gaahhhh!

Oh, and one last footnote. This is for the white dude who bought the T2 ticket before me, and who sat one row (but several seats to the right) behind me. I don’t know what planet you are from, but you have no right to complain about Filipinos not letting you have your way… especially when the people only asked you to please remove your stupid cowboy hat which was sitting like the Empire State Building on your gorilla head. I would have done the same, except I would have whacked you with the popcorn bag (with my platform shoes in it) if I heard you mumbling like that.

http://li-huang.xanga.com/

shortest blog yet… ehehehe. click on the xanga link for pics and vids.

This piece is prompted by a small incident that happened last night. I had just had a quiet, controlled, ear flapping dialogue with a representative from my Internet service provider. Their new albeit stupid call-in system was close to useless, and I had to travel all the way to the city just to air my complaints about my service being cut off every 30 minutes. Since the ISP’s office was in the mall, I decided to go grocery shopping afterwards. Apparently, almost everyone in Davao had the same idea, and the lines to the cashier were long. So there I was, standing in line for more than 30 minutes, carrying nothing more than a pack of powdered milk, a carton of grape juice and half a kilo of ground pork. This acquaintance of mine suddenly popped out of nowhere to say hi.

Actually, she was the neighbor of a classmate of mine when we were still freshmen in college. I had forgotten her name already and I was not about to ask her since we were never really on friendly terms. I mean, we probably exchanged hellos twice or thrice and I never really liked her that much anyway. Come to think of it, I never really liked my aforementioned classmate either.

Okay, so she suddenly pops up and says hi – very friendly like. We exchange a round of small talk, mostly centering on this mutual friend we have. Suddenly, the line was moving forward, and I was glad. Honestly, I was getting tired of discussing this classmate of mine, and apparently, there was nothing else that this girl and I had in common. All of the sudden, she asks me in Filipino if she could get in line before me. And I was like, what? She was pushing a cart filled to the brim with groceries and (the nerve of the @$$\\/!pE) was already positioning herself between me and this guy standing in front of me. I not-so-gently pushed her cart away and said that the line started back there.

She became nauseatingly “sweet,” begging me to let her, in a sort of like twisted baby talk kind of way. I didn’t say anything more, but I did give her a not-so-discreet finger. After the gesture registered in her minuscule brain, (took almost 5 minutes,) she walked away in a huff. Her parting shot went something like, “I thought we were friends.”

Apparently not, you pathetic waste of epithelial. And I thought that was the end of it. I was actually feeling good about it; despite the dirty looks and whispers behind my back that I was getting from two old, miserable hags behind me. They thought I was being cruel to my “friend.” Okay, I may not speak Bisaya (the local dialect) but I can understand enough to know what was being said.

Finally, it was my turn to checkout. I plopped my three items on the counter, and guess what? “Friend” pops up again like an unannounced fart and says in Filipino (and this is stupendously incredible to me,) “Okay, I will forgive you, if you pay for this. It’s my favorite.” She places a Van Houten can of chocolates on top of my pile. I swear to you, at that moment, I wanted to bitch-slap her right back to the @$$|-|0Le from whence she came.

I took her can, shoved it in her hands and in my loudest voice, I said, “Miss, huwag kang sumingit! Ang dulo ng pila nanduon. Kanina pa kami nakatayo dito. Singit ka ng singit, para kang tanga.” (Sorry guys, I am not about to translate this.) Fortunately, some of the other people, aside from the hags behind me, pitched in as well – yelling at her to stand in line. I turned my back on my “friend,” paid for my items and walked away.

It was only when I was sitting already in the taxi that I felt my heart hammering inside my chest, and I was shaking so much from anger. I knew I won this round, but my gahd! I am still being very much affected by this. I seriously want to split someone’s head today.

With a bit of free time on my hands this Sunday morning, I decided to go to the wet market to buy some stuff. My list was pretty simple: red rice, fruits, vegetables, any kind of seafood and maybe some meat. This should have been like any other market day, except for a series of weird event. First of all, I was accosted by two vendors. Their question was basically the same. They asked my why I was not buying from them anymore. I just smiled and said I had to go. The truth is: both vendors kept filching one to 2 pesos from my change and they both did that twice. So instead of reprimanding them, I just stopped patronizing their stalls. I mean, they filched five pesos from me all in all …it’s really not much, but the fact that they were basically stealing from me was quite galling. It’s not much a loss on my part anyway.

I went to a new stall because the other vendor I was patronizing didn’t have the red rice I needed – which was fine. But when I received my change – HALA! – the guy shortchanged me again by one peso. I pointed this out, and he just gave me an awkward smile. Fine, I thought. After all, it is only one peso. As I walked away, he called out, “Balik ka ha?” which means, come back again. I said, “Never,” and I told him that right to his face. Naturally, I didn’t wait to see what his reaction would be.  

As I was walking, this catsup hawker began following me. He was carrying several bags of pouched catsup with a label that I have never heard of in my entire life. I said no several times, and he was still very persistent. He was really getting to me, so I told him that I do not eat catsup (which is true.) The hawker said everyone eats catsup, and that he was going to give me a special promo. If I bought 2 pouches, he will give them to me at a discount price of 15 pesos. Real slick, since he was selling each pouch at 7 pesos each. Hay! I finally managed to shake him off after a few minutes.

I bought oysters for 35 pesos, which was amazing to me. In Manila, 35 pesos is unheard of especially if you are buying any kind of seafood.

On my way home, LFH (landlady from hell) yelled out from her corner of the lot something I did not understand. It turns out, she was asking me how she could possibly have skin like mine. Needless to say, LFH’s face is something similar to melted Swiss cheese. She kept bugging me of my beauty regiment, and was (hahahaha) even taking down notes. She asked me what soap I was using, and what makeup brands I had. All that time, I kept thinking, “for an old goat, you are certainly vain.” Besides, why ask me? Do I look like the Avon lady or something?

Weird, huh? And it’s only a little past 8 am…

I am writing this in response to all the people who are pooh-poohing Filipino English writers or Filipino writers or writers in general.

English writing it is hard. Some lots of people think that just cause writers not spend the day sweating means we not sweat. Of course we sweat under our hairline and on top of our foreheads that goes to the side of our faces and hot under the armpits and between the toes of our feet – because we do not have toes in other parts of the body except the feet. But that is nothing to do with writing. We need to constantly make the evolution of words continuos. If you do not understand, then the evolution ends with you. yOu are missing link when it comes to English writing like when bracelet broke and link disappear. You are like that. Anyway, it must empha-size that Englsish is hard because size matters, you know.

Are you realize that as English writer, we is to memorize lots of words. I mean, my golly. Howe many vocabulary is there? The moment I says “voca” there must be a “bulary” to following. You should know that that is real difficult, especially if you must increase you voca to become good writer. Imagine if you are like boxing referee only with only 10 voca, like 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Or if you want worser example, then there is the wrestling referee that only know 3-2-1. What kind of literature can make? Certainly not make it to English books, or magazine or websites where I work. Maybe in math books but I am not math writer. (Only average grade in math, and I almost kill my Trigonometry teacher because she toll me I have no head for math. Hala! If I have no head then I am execution, but I graduate still and shook my head at her before I wernt away.)

Anyway, decapitated to the side lines, because I don wanna it in the way because that is gross, and I want to settle matters first because I want to make focal point of the matter while making sure that thus I do not repeat myself because that would be redundant and repeating myself and people will accuse me of déjà vu when they think I am more than saying things over and over again, I will discuss the trigonometry teacher some other lifetime, if that is okay with you because I do not want to lose you in the focal point because points are pointed and we no wanna get hurt or suffer from déjà vu, right?

Anyway, it is also had to make sent3ence cnsturction and spelling work. I mean,l if you were construction, you cannot build a building from one brick only or one hallowblack. Maybe for ants that is building, but for peple…….. I mean, how can place an escalator or elevator in one hallowblack? Okay, now explain. You see, I tell you truly madly deeply that is impossible. You need to slowly build up foundation like makeup foundation before you add more cosmetics like blush and lipstick. If you have ugly face, then you need more foundation or the blush may melt away and the lipstick might so scared it lose its color.

Is also depends on what kind of literature is demand. There are many kinds of literatures stylings like what? Blog type, or intelligent type, or poetry or 3^rd person objective. You cannot simply write like one style only because no one wants to pay writers for one style only and is boring, no? And is boring. I mean, realy boring to the point it will tears you. And you cry and then you get so boring that you remove all the hair from your scalp and your armpit and then the sweat you have on your head flows more quickly down to your toes of you feet because I repeat, that tjere are no other toes on the body except the feet.

So, yes, yes yo, English writing it is hard. And if you not belive, I dare you to make edits this and make this printable in English books, or magazine or websites. And don’t overlooking my talent fee.

BB: This was published in the December 2008 issue of Life Today.

Everyone assumes that writing is such a romantic occupation. I most certainly did - wishing with all fervent hope that I would eventually walk the path that Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Conrad and Mary Shelley took when they made it through the annals of literary history.

In my benighted youth, I had imagined writers cloistered away in their lavish Victorian-inspired home, dark with velvety crimson curtains and thick tapestries. Quill in hand, parchment under their elbows, these writers would look out into the vast open countryside seeing not the green landscape, but characters … fictional characters… characters of their own creation… speaking, weeping and eventually floating back to the paper, becoming wisps of breath fashioned into the writers’ great languid scripts, where they, both the characters and the writers would eventually be immortalized in written text.

That is not the scenario I am facing here in Davao City. It is true that I moved to the countryside to pursue freelance writing, and I had hoped to lead a romantic life of solitude and creative inspiration. However, instead of working on the great novel I had planned, I am working on several online articles for the outsourcing company I work for. I can assure you, being a home based writer is certainly not at all romantic – at least, not when I am assigned to write about such topics like reverse mortgages, and tourist destinations in Australia or how to overcome brain damage.

I start the day at 3 am, not out of choice; but because the incessant crowing of the roosters right outside my bedroom window is something not to be ignored. Nothing could keep out the hoarse, throaty pre-dawn summons. I have tried ear plugs; I have tried playing violin concertos on my ear phones; I have even tried to shoo off the birds with buckets of water. Inadvertently, I earned the title of the “crazy girl chasing chickens in the morning.”

Unfortunately, even if I mange to splash the roosters senseless, they tend to crow every few minutes after that. When the other neighborhood roosters start crowing along, nothing could deaden my ears to the cacophony. And if that is not bad enough, the hens and their broods of chicks make their characteristic clucking noises, along with flapping wings and scratching, scratching, scratching on the ground all over my house – way before the sun is up. In the morning, when I have to grudgingly get up from bed, I have to constantly sweep away chicken droppings from my front porch, lest someone steps on them and inevitably bring it into my house.

For this series of misdeeds, I have given up on eating chickens and eggs. I simply cannot stand them now.

As I prepare myself for the day, I do my daily exercise by being chased around the house by gigantic house lizards longer than my shoe. These large headed, dark and green-banded lizards do most of the chasing; and I do most of the running away. For one reason or the other, they are not afraid of me. They tend to approach me whenever possible, even leaping great distances to get to where I am. Naturally, the higher they leap, the faster I run away. These reptiles too, would also leave droppings all over my house, and I have no choice but to clean up after them.

If I could, I would have placed a huge sign for both the chickens and the lizards that would read “My house is not your toilet! Do your business elsewhere!” Alas, I’m not particularly sure that they could read English, and I am not at all well versed with the local dialect.

When I complained to my landlady about my chicken and lizard problems and all the tiny souvenirs they leave, she only shrugged me off. She said those were the signs of luck. Droppings for luck? Gosh, if that was indeed true, how come I have never heard of very lucky chicken or a lucky lizard winning lotto or something? My trash can is probably filled to the brim with their luck. But I let it pass though. It’s a veritable waste of time talking about …waste and its relation to luck.

Sometimes, I think this is all a conspiracy. As soon as I sit in front of the computer to work, everything erupts to madness. The vehicles passing outside would be competing with each other for loudest and most obnoxious radio sounds possible. With their bass sounds pumped to full volume, they would inevitably make my walls vibrate and my teeth protest in their sockets.

People passing by would be talking so loud, unmindful of who might hear their conversations. Often too, you could hear the passengers of tricycles and motorcycles (habal-habal) conversing in full volume, their voices disappearing at the bend of the road.

Around 8 in the morning and thereafter, my next door neighbor, whom I have never met but has since dubbed as Celine, would turn on her karaoke machine and blast out nail-on-the-chalkboard versions of each and every Celine Dion’s song she could muster. The goat tied right outside her backyard would try to bleat to her time. Their amazing impromptu duets have brought me nothing but an increase on my consumption of headache tablets.

Hawkers of pan de sal, fish, and puto (steamed rice cakes) pass by in front of my house between 8:30 and 10 am. Along with them there are also the very numerous hawkers for scrap metal and recyclable plastic materials.

The street dogs, numbering to 5 to 20 would start their daily barking regiment soon after. They would bark at passing people, passing vehicles, passing animals on their way to the slaughter house. By lunch time and just after dinner, these canine sentries would give in to the most dreadful mass howling, very similar to the ones you hear in horror movies.

Living in the country side has also taught me to recognize the different faraway sounds that very often invade my consciousness whenever I am deep in thought. The whinny of the wayward wild horse sounds so loud, I could actually believe that it was standing right outside my doorstep … probably counting the chicken droppings on my front porch. The melancholy moans of the cattle and the piercing shrieks of the pigs on their way to slaughter always give me frightful goose bumps. Not because I feel their pain, but because those sounds are similar to the ones I make whenever I have to clean up another lizard dropping or when the reptiles suddenly makes a jump at me.

I certainly cannot imagine Edgar Allan Poe or Joseph Conrad or Mary Shelley having to contend with the noise of farm animals during their time. But who knows? Maybe they did. If this dissonance has not injected common sense into my head as to correcting my romantic notions of being a country-bound writer, my landlady, Nanay certainly has, and just this morning too.

Nanay, my ever omnipresent landlady literally invades my house daily; pretending to check up on me; wanting to know why I do not leave the house. Explaining to her the concept of providing writing services to a company in Makati City while I am here in Davao is like explaining brain surgery to a 6 month old infant: you get that intense look followed by a toothless smile that basically means I have no idea what you just said.

She would often point to my computer and ask me if that is where I do my writing. And I say, yes for the millionth time already. And she asks me if I write anything, and I tell her that I write what my boss specifies. She often gives me a thoughtful look after that and asked if my boss is in the computer; and I tell her, no, she’s in Makati, and I talk to her through the computer. (I cannot even begin to think how I could possibly explain to her the concept of communication via the World Wide Web.)

This morning though, she brought over her nephews, who asked me to write for them. Nanay apparently told them my rates, but she promised her nephews that I would give them discounts. (Nice!) Since all of them looked at me pleadingly, and I know from previous experience that Nanay would never give me a moment’s peace if I say no, I asked what they wanted me to write. They gave me a scrap of paper and said they needed 6 copies. The paper held three badly scrawled words that said: Lubi for sale. (Translation: coconut for sale.)

Ah, I finished that writing job in an instant, and yes, out of the sheer generosity of my heart, I did give them 90% discount off my standard rates. I even let them have the copies for free. Soon after they left, I decided to print the warning signs for the chickens and the lizards: “My house is not your toilet! Do your business elsewhere!”

Yes, what a writer I have become.