While everybody else is either inside their homes preparing
for media noche or outside destroying
their eardrums by adding to the cacophony in the streets, I'm in my bedroom thanking
God for the genius that are snug earbuds and getting ready to sleep because I
have work early tomorrow morning. Before I turn in, however, let me join the
public in doing one thing—making a recap of my 2012.
1 PLAY
My best friend since high school resigning from work might
have been the best and worst thing that happened to me in the office. Worst,
because although it's true for some people that having close friends as officemates
can put a strain on their friendship, it wasn't the case for Maricris and me,
and so naturally I was devastated when she had to leave. But best, too, because
when she left I got to know her cousin Hannah and former teammates Cams and
Jade more. Maybe I served as their replacement for Maricris, or maybe they
served as my replacement for her, but either way, we had a lot of great times
together, stuffing our faces at Bonchon, jogging, getting drunk on milk tea and
coffee, seeing movies, singing karaoke and a cappella, and most of all,
laughing our hearts out. Through Cams I got to know Claire Yvette, whom I like
to call Clara, who works as a theater production assistant and generously gives
away free tickets to friends. I was able to watch God of Carnage, which starred
Lea Salonga among other brilliant actors, with Cams for free at the RCBC Theater. Amusing
play.
9 TV SERIES
I surprised myself this year by taking part in activities that
only my outgoing friends do. I continued going on dates with my online buddy Koji
whom I've known for a while and we went to several exhibits, most notable
of which was The Myth of the Human Body. I went to drink and party at clubs
like Republiq in Pasay, Libations in Greenhills (where I teamed up with Tim, an
officemate, for a few rounds of beer pong against two strange guys we met
there) and Skye in Taguig. I went to two concerts: Katy Perry's and BIG BANG's. I even joined a couple of college friends at a beach
resort called Acuaverde in Laiya, Batangas. I'm not a fan of beaches or any
place that with noise or loud music renders conversations useless, and as
expected of an old-fashioned introvert like me, I always revert to my default
programming of just wanting to stay in my room, reading a book or watching TV
series or movies on my laptop. This year I discovered 9 TV series—Community, Arrested
Development, 30 Rock, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Revenge, 2 Broke Girls,
Awkward and Sherlock—and the fact that I downloaded all of their episodes to date
and watched them each night without much care that I have to leave for work
early the next morning should tell you how good these shows are.
7 NEW-HIRE CLASSES
Our department at work, as I have mentioned in a previous
blog, has never had to hire so many employees as we've had this year, and I am
glad to have somehow become an instrument in molding these new colleagues of
mine as part of our Training and Recruitment team. I began in April (unending
thanks to Tata for making it happen) merely updating and tweaking our databases,
and now with an expanded role I get to be involved in our new employees'
development. I'm not the best at what I do yet, that's for sure, but I'm striving
to improve and I'm enjoying every step of the learning process.
3 BOSSES
The team listing in our department was shuffled early this year and I initially dreaded transferring under the management of Agnes, whose name calls to mind unpleasant memories for most, but whose heart, I later found out, was golden and whose skills and knowledge only few can match. She eventually had to leave the company fighting for what she knew was right, and my team misses her even now. Robert replaced Agnes, and Ninno is who I report to for Training and Recruitment. (Titles removed for smoother narration, although of course I address them with their respective titles at work.) I'd share good things about them but since they're still my current bosses, that might just be deemed as sucking up (though they might not even get to read this at all). Let me say this, however: Work can be hell, and it usually is for those who (A) don't like what they're doing and (B) have difficult bosses. I am happy to report that both statements don't apply to me.
5 BAGUIO TRIPS
A few things I can remember from our Psychiatric Nursing lectures
back in college and one of them is dissociative fugue. Also called a psychogenic fugue, it's a type of amnesia where one does not only have an
inability to recall his memories and personality but also has the urge to
travel or wander and even sometimes establishes a completely new identity. Minus
the amnesia bit, I discovered I have this tendency to suddenly want to go on a "fugue
state" especially when I am too emotionally burdened. And so it was in January after Someone's Revelation
To Me That Changed It All (the details of which are to be either elaborated
upon in my biography or carried to my grave) that I sought solace in Baguio. The biting cold, the many twisted roads perfect for walking at
nighttime, the crowd who knew nothing of me—they all served to make me immediately
consider Baguio my second home when I revisited it as a young adult in 2010,
and those same things welcomed me with open arms when I returned in January. And
again when I came back during the Panagbenga Festival. And again three other
visits later, two of which I was already accompanied by friends.
I never really fully understood Kelly Clarkson's song "Sober,"
even when I've already listened to it more than a thousand times, until I
watched a YouTube video of her performing it in 2011 at her Sony-sponsored
concert at the Troubadour. She shared how she had written the song off a line
from a friend who said to "pick the weeds and keep the flowers." It was probably
that one line in the song that didn't make sense to me until she explained that
it was about "[picking] the people out of your life that are cancerous for you
and [going] with the good ones." That was a lesson I had to learn the hard way
this year, actually. I don't always have to be the one working on making my friendship
with someone grow—most of the time I just have to let it flourish. It may not often
do so or at all, but either way I have to learn to let go especially if the relationship is doing me more harm than good.
And so there it is: 1 play, 3 bosses, 5 Baguio trips, 7 new-hire
classes and 9 TV series. New friends gained, old friends lost. Countless books,
films, dinners, jogs, laughs and lessons, the most important of which is—as cliché as
it sounds—to love myself more. That's my New Year's resolution for 2013.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Concerts, concerts, concerts...
January 22 this year, around 10 o'clock in the morning, one of my high school best friends Julia and I arrived at SM Mall of Asia for Katy Perry's California Dreams concert. Julia, being a die-hard Katy fan, suggested we check in at a nearby motel the night before so it would be easier getting to the venue the next morning. Get to the venue easily, we did. And much too early. At the mall, I impulsively bought myself a watch, then we had brunch at Classic Savory and checked out the concert venue. This was the supposed view from our section of the concert grounds:
We had silver tickets and we thought, hey, not bad. We didn't really consider, though, that those in the gold section, perhaps merely influenced by the sections in front of them, would stand on the seats provided them, leaving us with, well, no view whatsoever of Katy Perry except for when she was being hoisted in the air during her performance of "Not Like the Movies" and of course when her face was being shown on the screens. And so, joined by my other high school best friend Maricris, this was the silver crowd and the view we had no choice but to settle for come concert time:
"Upo, upo, upo! (Sit, sit, sit!)" chanted the silver crowd when Katy Perry finally came out after about an hour's delay. My companions and I considered looking for some scalper to upgrade our tickets to at least gold, but we couldn't leave our posts anymore. "Upo, upo, upo!" continued the chanting. The gold crowd, however, still atop their Monobloc seats, merely glanced at us, probably realizing only for the first time that there were people behind them, then returned their gaze to Katy. Livid, the silver crowd, including Julia, threatened to bridge the gap between them and the gold area by either jumping across or pushing the chain-link fence forward. Marshals threatened to do something bad to us, what exactly I do not remember, but while several of them repaired parts of the chain-link fence that some of the angry mob had been successful in unfastening, most of them only whispered amongst themselves like they were coming up with a brilliant compromise to appease us, such as reiterate to the gold crowd that the purpose of their chairs is to be sat on, but really the buffed-up and highly efficient ushers only stood watching us the entire time like we were psych patients in an observation room.
It was like People Power Revolution, but with Katy singing "Peacock" in the background and me not being much of an activist. I yelled a couple of statements of indignation but mostly I conserved my energy for a possible riot outbreak and simply laid out in my head a draft of the blog entry I was to write on the whole thing (nine months later, ta-da!). Needless to say, it was the most embarrassing night of my life. Because it wasn't that we couldn't afford gold tickets or even titanium or VIP. We decided to get only silver tickets so it wouldn't be too much for Maricris and me who liked Katy Perry okay but weren't really dying to see her perform live.
Lesson learned, which should have been obvious to us since the beginning: the pricier the ticket, the better the view, though standing on chairs really is inevitable no matter how refined your manners are. Case in point: BIG BANG's Alive Tour concert at the SM Mall of Asia Arena two nights ago.
I arrived early at the venue with my co-worker Bianca, a huge K-pop fan, but we got to see the show late. We had too much confidence in the special treatment we expected to be accorded to us because we had VIP passes, so we hung about with Patrick, an online friend who was also attending the concert, watched the people who were already in line, and checked out the official merchandise being sold outside the venue. When to our disappointment we found out there was really just that one line to get in, we finally joined the queue. Only after wading through the same garbage everyone else did to reach the entrance did we feel the long-awaited privilege of having VIP passes when we got ushered into a separate queue. Getting to our section of the concert area wasn't too difficult, but we got there probably two songs into the show and discovered that they have a loose usage of the term "reserved seating" as H-22 and H-23 were already occupied and no one was actually seated anywhere because everyone was up on their seats.
No complaints about not seeing BIG BANG, though.
Except for the occasional obstruction in our view caused by floating iPads and Samsung tablets.
Even if we got cheaper tickets, however, I think we would have enjoyed the concert just fine. In fact, we might have enjoyed the concert more, because in the non-VIP areas, the farther the seats, the more elevated they are, so even if the person in front of you stands up, you can just get up too and your view would be unobstructed. Bianca and I, because we arrived late and didn't want to go to the trouble of fighting for our seats, simply stayed at the back of the VIP-1 section, so we occasionally still had to tiptoe to get cameras and tablets out of our sight and avoid getting hit in the face with glow sticks. We were thankfully not close enough that the bottled water the band members, particularly Daesung, liked to splash on the crowd toward the end of the show could reach us.
So lessons learned from both Katy Perry and BIG BANG concert experiences: Aim for the pricier ticket if the venue's a field or something similar; otherwise, any reserved seating pass would do. Arrive early so if the reserved seating rule turns out to be a myth, you can get to the very front of your assigned concert section. And lastly, bring a camera but don't let documenting the concert get in the way of actually enjoying the event—a lesson a lot of concert-goers should take to heart.
We had silver tickets and we thought, hey, not bad. We didn't really consider, though, that those in the gold section, perhaps merely influenced by the sections in front of them, would stand on the seats provided them, leaving us with, well, no view whatsoever of Katy Perry except for when she was being hoisted in the air during her performance of "Not Like the Movies" and of course when her face was being shown on the screens. And so, joined by my other high school best friend Maricris, this was the silver crowd and the view we had no choice but to settle for come concert time:
"Upo, upo, upo! (Sit, sit, sit!)" chanted the silver crowd when Katy Perry finally came out after about an hour's delay. My companions and I considered looking for some scalper to upgrade our tickets to at least gold, but we couldn't leave our posts anymore. "Upo, upo, upo!" continued the chanting. The gold crowd, however, still atop their Monobloc seats, merely glanced at us, probably realizing only for the first time that there were people behind them, then returned their gaze to Katy. Livid, the silver crowd, including Julia, threatened to bridge the gap between them and the gold area by either jumping across or pushing the chain-link fence forward. Marshals threatened to do something bad to us, what exactly I do not remember, but while several of them repaired parts of the chain-link fence that some of the angry mob had been successful in unfastening, most of them only whispered amongst themselves like they were coming up with a brilliant compromise to appease us, such as reiterate to the gold crowd that the purpose of their chairs is to be sat on, but really the buffed-up and highly efficient ushers only stood watching us the entire time like we were psych patients in an observation room.
It was like People Power Revolution, but with Katy singing "Peacock" in the background and me not being much of an activist. I yelled a couple of statements of indignation but mostly I conserved my energy for a possible riot outbreak and simply laid out in my head a draft of the blog entry I was to write on the whole thing (nine months later, ta-da!). Needless to say, it was the most embarrassing night of my life. Because it wasn't that we couldn't afford gold tickets or even titanium or VIP. We decided to get only silver tickets so it wouldn't be too much for Maricris and me who liked Katy Perry okay but weren't really dying to see her perform live.
 |
| Katy and model Ivan Dorschner whom she selected from the audience for a kiss. |
Lesson learned, which should have been obvious to us since the beginning: the pricier the ticket, the better the view, though standing on chairs really is inevitable no matter how refined your manners are. Case in point: BIG BANG's Alive Tour concert at the SM Mall of Asia Arena two nights ago.
I arrived early at the venue with my co-worker Bianca, a huge K-pop fan, but we got to see the show late. We had too much confidence in the special treatment we expected to be accorded to us because we had VIP passes, so we hung about with Patrick, an online friend who was also attending the concert, watched the people who were already in line, and checked out the official merchandise being sold outside the venue. When to our disappointment we found out there was really just that one line to get in, we finally joined the queue. Only after wading through the same garbage everyone else did to reach the entrance did we feel the long-awaited privilege of having VIP passes when we got ushered into a separate queue. Getting to our section of the concert area wasn't too difficult, but we got there probably two songs into the show and discovered that they have a loose usage of the term "reserved seating" as H-22 and H-23 were already occupied and no one was actually seated anywhere because everyone was up on their seats.
No complaints about not seeing BIG BANG, though.
Except for the occasional obstruction in our view caused by floating iPads and Samsung tablets.
 |
| Hey, thanks! I could just watch the concert conveniently on your tablet! |
Even if we got cheaper tickets, however, I think we would have enjoyed the concert just fine. In fact, we might have enjoyed the concert more, because in the non-VIP areas, the farther the seats, the more elevated they are, so even if the person in front of you stands up, you can just get up too and your view would be unobstructed. Bianca and I, because we arrived late and didn't want to go to the trouble of fighting for our seats, simply stayed at the back of the VIP-1 section, so we occasionally still had to tiptoe to get cameras and tablets out of our sight and avoid getting hit in the face with glow sticks. We were thankfully not close enough that the bottled water the band members, particularly Daesung, liked to splash on the crowd toward the end of the show could reach us.
So lessons learned from both Katy Perry and BIG BANG concert experiences: Aim for the pricier ticket if the venue's a field or something similar; otherwise, any reserved seating pass would do. Arrive early so if the reserved seating rule turns out to be a myth, you can get to the very front of your assigned concert section. And lastly, bring a camera but don't let documenting the concert get in the way of actually enjoying the event—a lesson a lot of concert-goers should take to heart.
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