Air Pockets

In my wildest, snazziest ambitious dreams, I dreamt of being able to constantly travel for work. I had absolutely no idea how to make it happen but I wished so anyway. Between travelling for holiday and work, the latter seemed more appealing and befitting for me who doesn’t know what to do on a holiday.

I don’t know how holidays are played out because in my lifetime, I’ve only had three legitimate holidays and my jobs always had working holidays. All I know about holidays is that I get premium pay. I go on vacation but it still feels like work because I still have to stick to a schedule and don’t stay too idle because the clock is ticking, soon after it’s over and then it would feel like a chore.

For some reason I just found myself flying a lot. Actually, the reason was my previous boss put me on a different assignment and then she resigned; it can also be said that I may have performed well; I don’t know. I fly at least four times a month because logistically, when I go, I must return. To be clear I only go to two staple destinations; going on three next month. When I’m lucky, like this year, I get to fly abroad twice. According to Foursquare, I’m a jetsetter!

Sounds fun! But not quite. I get jittery with every flight and the more I fly the worse it gets. I could feel my heart jump out and grab the life jacket and leave me strapped to my seat. If only I could spend the entire flight fast asleep; I want to intoxicate myself but I will not be allowed to board and there is nothing else I can think of to make me snooze. And even if they did, I can’t report to work drunk!

I wonder how other passengers get used to the nerve-wracking turbulence that shakes the beans out of you. I will never get used to this, there will never come a time in my life that I will be nonchalant when the seat belt sign is on and the flight attendants are scuttling away calmly. It doesn’t help that I’m always flying alone, ride to and from the airport alone and be alone most of the time. I’ve spent so much time by myself during these turbulent moments that it’s so ‘meta’ already.

But there are no actual complaints coming from here save for the backache and stiff neck which I’ve decided to avoid by buying a travel pillow. It’s just my nerves and I just want it out that I’m scared of flying. I’m really really scared of flying and it’s embarrassing because I know other people who fly more frequently than I do and they’re not sissies like me.

 

The First And Second Thoughts

As I was taking my late lunch today I contemplated on some things about myself. I thought about this while eating the packed lunch I prepared for myself and Husband and watching the rain through the glass window. For the record, I am still on lunch break as I type this entry and sip my coffee.

The first thought came to mind when a co-worker from a different department asked me if I am enjoying my office job. Truth be told, yes I do, I enjoy sitting in my desk and having my own pink swivel chair and my calendar filled with activities and notepad filled with work scribbles and personal photos pinned to my side of the wall.  I can finally say ‘I’m on my way to the office’!

This is my first desk job since my student assistant days in college when I fell asleep at work out of boredom and swore never to take an office job again.

For those who know me well, they know I am pretty foolish because I tend to choose the things that bring me hardship than those that seem easy. This is evident in my peculiar addiction to puzzles set to ‘expert’ and ‘hard’ mode and never stopping until I got it right.

This job also gave me a balanced idea on how people do what they do and that they really don’t sit all day and eat and talk all day as I imagined they did. A desk job person has a different competency compared to a retail operations person. We probably use different parts of our brains and have different approaches to resolve because we have different reasons which is perfect because if we were all the same we would all be like the crazy-eye girls who share the same brain and everything and it would be boring.

The second thought that drifted my mind was about feelings. I publicly claimed a week ago at an office meeting that I harbor no feelings for my job, which is true because feelings are deadly. If I ever entertained any of my girly feelings these past six months then I would have probably tendered my resignation early on. My feelings are precious and so is my ego so I keep them in check to protect them.

Instead of dwelling on my feelings, I would just have to accept that my perfection is only according to my standards which happens to be not updated as of the moment. I don’t have time to update my mental notes, when I find the time, my competency will probably be down the drain against my updated personal standards.

Because of my lack of feelings, I shove all the silliness and cattiness in a mental darkroom room and wait until the source of all the silliness come to their right mind and see that the world is not at their beck and call.

I have to say, I am a very kind person with a good heart and if I someone does me wrong, I would find it silly and pointless.

 

Nostalgic Press

Lately, Husband and I have been playing old school music. By old school, we mean, music we grew up with in the 90’s. I miss the 90’s, in fact, I miss my childhood. I miss the time when I was an unassuming reluctant kid who relied on my older relatives for junk food, good times and midnight snacks.

I miss the times when I flipped through overused copies of chord books and song sheets teaching myself to play the guitar and the piano. Life was simple so I made an effort to make it complicated by learning things on my own. The tips of my fingers became thick and calloused and I only managed to play basic guitar and piano and did it in private.

Learning to play musical instruments was not enough to make life as complicated as I wanted it to be so I practiced writing on both hands. I wanted to be ambidextrous so I spent an entire summer writing in my journal with my left hand. The result was a bad collection of hieroglyphics which dates back to ’97 AD.

The truth is, I immensely miss the old times and old ways. I miss the Family Computer despite not being able to play much because my brothers hogged it. I miss Lego and the houses I built and demolished and rebuilt, in the same fashion and layout. I probably have already been showing signs of neuroses doing that. I also miss my kitchen playset and all the leaves and soil I cooked in it. I miss climbing vines and hills and catching tadpoles in the brook.

I am only 28 years old and I’m already missing my childhood. I wonder what would happen to me when I’m 35? I’d probably feel too old and take an early retirement. I already feel old and nostalgic like I don’t belong somewhere along the lines of ‘young and beautiful.’ I feel so mature and that makes me lonely because while I’m really fun and such, I don’t really feel so hip. Business makes me feel like an old stern lady. I have always had a suspicion that I am an old soul person but I didn’t know that it can also be very debilitating and tiresome to be mature all the time.

The Status Quo of Celebrations

It’s Mother’s Day and to be very honest I’m not too keen about it. My dear Mommy raised me too level-headed about celebrations. I grew up not caring about any other occasion save for immediate family’s birthdays and only my parent’s wedding anniversary and not even expecting any kind of BANG! off of it.
To be fair, birthdays and anniversaries were always remembered through fantastic home-made food consumed intimately at home without much fanfare.
Such was this practice that I grew up with a strong sense of privacy about celebrations that matter to me coupled with impartiality towards any other celebrations.
One thing my Mommy told me, even when I was too young to understand, was that most occasions are played up as a result of a marketing scheme to ensure commercial success. In a very anti-social way, we somehow subconsciously avoided all sorts of holidays without verbally agreeing to it.
As a result, I seem to have lived a life of status quo all year round with a bit of excitement on birthdays. Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparent’s Day, Graduation Day, Christmas Day and the rest of their kind were merely ordinary days that give great cause to buy some flowers, blinking lights, greeting cards or gifts.
But my status quo is not miserable unlike what most people expected of an uncelebratory person. In the same way that my Mommy dampened occasions, she also made everyday a lovely day, which made up for the lack of social activities at home.
I was never one to give in to the commercial aspect of celebrations. No gifts, no flowers, no dinners on commercial holidays because it can be done any other day, especially when the prices are down or it’s 75% off.

Everyday is a day to love my family and my parents.

Everyday is a day I can remember the dearly departed.

Everyday is a day of kindness and generosity.
Also, everyday is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

A Day In The Swivel Chair Of Sammies

In light of my recent ‘solo flight’ in the office, that is since my boss left the company for a much greener pasture, I came to assess my new job responsibilities. Take note that it doesn’t say new job or new post, because everything is supposed to be the same except for a few things that I am about to enumerate.

I had to look at it from a greater picture to see if this is a mutually beneficial set up. So to get the clearest assessment I made a mental list of the usual stuff I do for a day, this mental list had to be written down because I need more space for thought processes.

On a regular day I:

-answer phone calls from whoever and talk to the media, a huge improvement because I don’t like to talk and I don’t like the media, but I had to do it, so I got used to it.

-talk to the boss and defend myself and the brand, another huge improvement.

-correspond with the French, which I learned to do without missing a heartbeat.

-write press releases and catchy fashion copy-writing, choose models and other snazzy fashion stuff. These projects are not going to last long, but at least I got the copy-writing bit quite permanent and exercise my creative writing muscles.

-write memos and then sign them too! Ha-ha!

-exercise my MS Excel muscles as well as my arithmetic.

-train and retrain store people and revise modules.

-show up to meetings.

-propose incentive schemes that needs to be defended like a thesis and takes forever to be approved.

-chase signatories.

-plan. Plan training schedules. Plan store visits. Plan flights. Plan projects. Plan promotions.

-interview persons who aspire to join us in the glamorous industry of fashion. And boy, do I quash their misconceptions prematurely!

-attend to a hefty mix of merchandising and retails operations stuff hurled unto me by the stores and other departments.

-still do the leg work if I have to.

-sit on my fuschia swivel chair in an empty cubicle and gain extra fat. I am now officially 1Kg overweight and gained 10lbs over the past months and I’m not even pregnant yet.

This does not help me answer the ‘Mutualism’ question. Not even ‘PayDay’ can justify this for me right now. But! If I get my visa…I am going to France! And that’s exactly a month from now. So we will see.

The. Best. Wedding. Ever.

To the surprise and dismay of many of my friends and family, my then-boyfriend and I have finally decided to tie the knot in the quickest and quietest fashion we could ever think of. For years, I have always wanted to marry quietly with not much ado because I don’t like parties and I don’t want to fuss over the entertainment of everyone.

A few of my friends have demanded for a pre-party (I had the decency to make a quick FYI note) and after-party, which is both nice and annoying. It is nice to know that they care so much about me to want to celebrate my wedding, but it is also annoying because, really, this wedding is about me and my new husband and our families merging together. It’s not very obvious but I am really more inclined to celebrate it quietly with my family and I like quiet dinners. I would eventually make plans to party with a few friends on separate occasions for each group, but it’s not a priority.

The priority is settling into a new home and making it habitable and comfortable. The new home is habitable but not comfortable yet. Tonight we managed to cook pancit canton, our first cooking venture since we moved in two weeks ago. We have been cleaning house for an entire fortnight and never seem to finish it. However, we seem to have successfully exterminated the pests! Hurrah for aggressive pest control project!

Hopefully tomorrow we can bring in a rice cooker and an electric kettle so we can become really self-sufficient adults and stop the parasitism called ‘eating at my brother’s house.’

Aside from the surprising difficulty of developing a starter home, I also learned that one of the wonders and probably the best novelty of marriage is having someone to take long listless walks with and buying cheap food at any time of the day or night and make fun about our being broke. It’s a joy I married my best friend and I hope other people marry their best friends too.

It’s not the most lucrative (yeah, I mean it) and well-off union I know, but it sure is the warmest, quirkiest and most fun ever.

Extending My ‘Shelf Life’

Once again, my life took an interesting turn and in the busyness of all of it, I failed to document each turn. In fact, I now think that when I have more stories to write, I find less time to do so. On days when I have absolutely nothing to share, I also have so much time to write.

The first turn in my life which I have previously written about was the change in my work responsibilities. Oh and it’s good to note that today marks the first time I have ever bridged the ‘2-year’ shelf life! Yipee! This calls for a celebration!

Everything I’m tasked to do at work now is all Greek to me and frankly, I’m just conning my way through it. I keep pretending I understand and pick up context clues everywhere, eventually, I learn what the hell it’s all about and get validation from Wikipedia and Google. Ha-ha! Above-the-line, below-the-line, shipment, opening materials, linear meter, etc. Ha-ha!

Because I’ve conned that I’m a quick-witted person I don’t have the liberty to be slow and be honest about it. Geez, this week alone work made my hands literally froze from anxiety, I wanted to keel over and bang my head on the floor. I also realized that the most important posts do entail so much responsibility and so much unwanted elbow-rubbing with more important people in the company.

It’s not always good to get used to that comfortable place below the radar.

The Circus

On the premise of moving to the head office, I thought of writing a satirical series from an outsider’s point of view, loosely based on the characters I encounter everyday. Well at this point, the project seems impossible to follow through, so far, I’ve only managed to awkwardly move around like an intern subconsciously  ticking off my mental to-do list while trying to be super geek. I haven’t had time to glance around and really see the people around me, I was like in a stupor for an entire day.

This stupor I was in, in fairness, gave me the mechanical wisdom to operate like a robot without any need for food, bladder break or human interaction. I remembered the first time I experienced this helpful stupor was when I was studying for a Negotiable Instruments Law  in college. I was doing my best to understand the complicated laws of check endorsements for my finals and I actually felt my right brain swelling. I did my best not to snap out of it lest I forget everything that has been stored in my right brain. From then on, I let my hypnotized brain step up whenever I need to solve and analyze a set of problems.

Now for quite a long time, I am the queen bee of my territory; every thing I want to get done is done. I am quite proud of my team for they know exactly how to roll. These past days I feel like an intern, albeit a corporate intern though that’s just fine because I’ve never been in corporate and I’m learning heavyweight things. I feel like scratching my head and laughing at myself when no one’s looking because it’s really funny to be clueless when you’ve been used to delegating tasks and giving instructions for so long.

However, I still consider all of this a great spin on timing for I have in fact a two-year shelf life on jobs. In twenty to twenty-four months of continuous pattern, I tend to feel restless and unchallenged. Now I don’t need to feel that way because I’m so up in my toes in anxiety.

The Long Road

There are great mysteries in life that man will try to solve on his own, for some the mystery may be inspired by the profound school of existentialism, for me it revolved around the mundane and the vain. For years I have been plagued with one shallow question: why don’t boys like me?

I guess it may have been karmic, for I remember when I was in grade school, I ran away from boys who either liked me or have been rumored to like me. I swore them off like locusts and prayed them to stop.

And stop they did. For more than a decade not a single boy liked me or have been rumored to have liked me. I spent my teenage years wondering why boys never liked me. In high school the situation did not bother me a lot because I was consumed with my own admiration for my crushes. Boy, they were plenty! Besides romance was not so popular in my high school, the girls who acquire boyfriends get a bit of an off reputation.

Then I went off to college, it remained zero in my first year. The delay is acceptable considering that I wasn’t popular and the very few people who knew me thought I was a lesbian. It was an awful case of stereotyping – just because I was chubby with short hair! So I concentrated on my crushes until I decided to stop school for a year. No school and no social skills obviously gave me zero results.

I transferred to another university and met quite a few friends and friends of friends. At this point, I started wondering what is wrong with me. I have a friend who’s also been No Boyfriend Since Birth, but not quite so much, that was out of her own preference, she rejected boys and actually had her first boyfriend in second year high school. They lasted for a week and she’s always threatening me whenever I bring it up.

Anyway, this same friend has kept questioning me about her nonexistent love life. I kept telling her it’s because she kept rejecting boys, I didn’t even had the chance of actually rejecting boys.

For my part there were girls and gays fatter than me, as average looking as I was (though I secretly believed I could be prettier), with average academic skills as I had (I also believed I could be far smarter), with average pocket money as I did, but they all have boyfriends and they have even had more that one at the same time.

I used to joke that if only a boy would like me I would do his assignments, buy him lunch everyday and be really nice. For the record, I didn’t mean it, I never wanted to be a doormat or date a really below average guy. I could never accept that ‘intimidating’ excuse, I’m not a monster or an abominable snowman, how could I possibly appear bigger than myself?

It was such a pity, really, to have no validation of your own awesomeness from the opposite sex. I tried to tell my mother how miserable it is not to be astonishingly attractive, unlike her, but she launched into an angry “so you want to get married now?” litany which made me want to become a spinster. I was just trying to share my frustration for being fat and ugly my entire growing up years.

I vowed to myself that if I ever meet a boy who’d show me a bit of appreciation for my entire apparently physically repulsive self, I’d do everything to make him my boyfriend.

Yes I found that boy and eight years, nine months and twenty-six days later, I betrothed myself unto him. In other words we engaged ourselves into an impending matrimony. In true Samanthaish fashion, everything will transpire without grand announcements or elaborate parties.

Maturity In A Wardrobe Cabinet

There are no skeletons in my closet, only a hideous amount of clothes infected with molds that I want cleaned out. So early today I set out to act on my plan to disinfect my closet and sort through my wardrobe.

In the past couple of years, sorting and giving away clothes have been a pretty frequent activity. I daresay, it was easy to do then because I just stick to the “six months rule”; so every piece of clothing I forgot about and do not care to wear any sooner was given away. I also made a mental note not to keep clothes that “I might wear in the future.” The thing is, if I never wear them now, I’ll never wear them in the future. And even if something comes up in the future I’m sure I’ll buy something new to wear.

I also have a new rule, it’s called “everything in the closet must be worn.” So I threw away shoes that have been sitting in the rack for years and months. Even more clothes have been out too, some I’ve tried to sell at very low prices, but without success so I just put them outside the door.

Recently, it got kind of difficult to decrease my inventory. There are clothes with sentimental value – never mind that they’re outdated – which I can not bring myself to throw away. The clothes I actually love have outnumbered the ones which I just keep for posterity. Lastly, most of them are really nice and relatively new, without cost to me, I reiterate that.

As I try to rationalize my overstock, I realized that over the years when I was learning my style and getting to know my personality, I made a few shopping mistakes here and there, which I gravely suffered for. I did not a have a niche therefore I just bought clothes that I might like. As I matured, I am now able to define myself through the choices I make, clothes I buy and wear, books I read, shows I watch, food I eat, words I say and write, and people I associate with.

So now I am down to 184 pieces of clothes, broken down to: 8 jeans, 8 trousers, 8 shorts, 12 skirts, 35 dresses, 41 tops and blouses, 10 sweaters, 8 cardigans, 8 jackets, 15 tank tops, 14 brassieres and 17 unidentified house clothes not including the swimsuits which I conveniently omitted. It may grow again but I am very very careful not to buy clothes that I might never wear.

Should there be another set of Promod Gift Cards, I know I won’t resist it and be a grinch and not use them for myself. Who says no to free-no-cost-to-you brand new clothes anyway? Or almost free clothes from the employee sale?

Times like these, I wish I had a sister who would borrow some of my clothes so they don’t get all moldy and neglected. Also, so I don’t have to give them all away and we’ll just keep it in the family.