Funny thing about this post from Jane, I had a similar experience when I wrote a letter to my grandfather late last year. I have a strange relationship with my grandparents, and I’ve always felt like it should extend into something more than the formal and traditional, very stiff elder-Chinese mode of behaviour.

I don’t have the grandpa that Heidi does in the mountain, or those eccentric bearded ones that most white people have. My grandfather is a reserved, very serious man with a light, kind smile but inversely substantial authority. He never hits or yells, but as soon as words slip through his quiet lips, he commands respect almost automatically.

He’s a rather majestic sort of man, with successes built very much by his own hands. There is never an informal moment with my grandfather, even at the dining table at his house, with the marble lazy Susan and the television blaring cheap Filipino afternoon variety shows. It’s almost an innate sense of being, of accomplishment; it naturally carries him into any room, whether it is for a business meeting or for an afternoon lunch with us grandchildren.

Soon after my mum passed away, I saw for the very first time that my grandfather wasn’t just a fixture in our family tree or his kitchen dining table with the marble lazy Susan. I distinctly recall him walking up to my mum during the wake, and to see his composure basically break down was probably one of the most horrible feelings I’ve ever experienced.

Again, he didn’t break down and start throwing things or beating people. It was an ever so slight wobble of his thin hands touching the top of the casket, and him pulling his fingers to his lips to stop a gasp from escaping. That was all that happened, but the moment was both bizarre and unsettling.

So to get to my point, I wrote to my grandfather late this year, and told him everything I had ever wanted to say to him. Chloe help me translate.

I talked about what I did in Vancouver and what my education and current profession entailed, briefly explained that I don’t design clothing (that old thing), enclosed a photo of Hugo, and talked about books and subjects that I was interested in, and asked him what his favourites were.

I didn’t hear from him for a while, but suddenly he called me up, long distance cellphone minutes (which are not that cheap in Manila). It was another late night at Kaldor, and I was by myself working on conceptual frameworks and deliverables and touchpoints and collateral. My teenager phone rang its slightly obnoxious ringtone, and to my surprise, it was that familiar and intimidating whisper-mumble of my grandfather.

“G…inger-a,” he began. “I… I want to say thank you and I am so proud of you.”

My sister told me that he had been so happy to hear from me, but unfortunately couldn’t respond in kind due to his hands, which had become more and more uncooperative with age. I was looking forward to becoming pen pals with my grandfather, and getting to know him.

“I want… more things like this from you,” he said slowly, in that wonderfully terrifying Chinese dialect that all Chinese-Filipino parents judged their useless third-generation children with.

I thought that was a perfect way to end a 12-hour work day.

Wait, there’s more!

Now the shitty part. A few days later, I received a text message from my grandpa again, but THIS TEENAGER PHONE, $10, DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.

FUCK YOU LGGGGGG.

So there I was, staring at the screen of my teenager phone, looking at “Message from Grandpa: boxboxboxboxboxboxboxboxboxboxbox”

Suddenly, a stroke of genius! I shall email this SMS via WAP to my inbox to decode in the computer!

And I got this:

Now, if you are familiar with Chinese at all, none of these symbols are Chinese. Close, but no banana.

I asked Moon Yong, my brauzer-in-law, to see if he can translate for me, as he was brilliant and fluent in Chinese. And his response?

“fmksjehajebaf <— it looks like this”

My other good friend later clarified that it wasn’t so much my grandfather typing on his iPhone with his foot, but a series of character glyphs that got encoded wrong when I sent the message to myself.

And so, the mystery continues. It unravels this Sunday, Manila time, as my sister goes over to his house for her weekly Sunday meetings. Stay tuned for more Mystery Messages from Grandpa.

I went into my DVDs to put in Fawlty Towers into the player and I discovered that Jane had left me a note when she had returned it to me last year!

I’m sorry I didn’t find it until today! :) Thanks Jane Koo!

As for Teenager Phone, he seems to be serving me quite well. I’m happy with my choice, but then again, for $10, I don’t really have the luxury of expecting too much. I still feel awfully juvenile as it totally looks and feels like a toy, but I do enjoy what Teenager Phone has to offer.

On the work front, I’ve begun to feel the process of what most of my precedents and elders (excuse the term) describe as “cutting my teeth.” It’s a popular discussion, but it’s something very different to go through it. I enjoy the notion of having to work for where I want to be, and have spent a lot of the time figuring things out both internally and externally. There are new things and changes afoot at Kaldor, and I find myself in an integral point, where it is make or break.

I’m having to prove myself and my worth to Kaldor, and man, I am extremely exhausted, but at the same time very excited.

If anything, it feels like Grad Project 2.0, and I hold no reservations about saying that I am the kind of person who absolutely revels in the wonderful feeling of getting it right, or as I like to describe it, the “FUCK YOU BITCHES!” moment.

As deftly illustrated by Johnny Cash.

I have no shame in saying that I live for those moments. That point where I get to bend my knees and flip everyone off. So crass, but I have to say, that it is the best feeling in the world.

To be clear though, I won’t be doing this physically to Sally or anyone at work… :/

It’s the light at the end of my tunnel, the thing that keeps me going. I wonder what it is for other people…

… by a half hour.

Goddammit! Delivery delayed to Monday, it seems. Not a good start.

I’ve been fighting it for a while, and almost everyone is familiar with my battle over control with Rogers. I debated it endlessly, and bought the Nokia E72 (ie, Big Boy Phone) to get full advantage of my 1000 sent text messages plan via its quirky QWERTY keypad. Also on the agenda:

• to look cool, like I was on a Blackberry but not really because I can’t afford the Blackberry Plan… neither can I afford the Smartphone Plan, actually…
• to take fantastic 5MP photos of my cat on the floor or licking his balls
• to browse the web with free wifi, and check important things for life questions such as “Did that onion ring finally get more fans than Stephen Harper?”

But Big Boy Phone, while its made me feel totally grown up and smart, has let me down a couple of times already—the most recent failure, the alarm clock fiasco that ended with me waking up to a flashing screen without sound, and arriving to work (and a production meeting) 45 minutes late.

I distinctly recall waking up and saying to myself, “Why do I feel so refreshed?” and then putting my glasses on to see that I had overslept BY AN HOUR. I also remember scrambling to look at my Big Boy phone, with its frozen screen, flashing a black box, as if saying, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

My Nokia E72, ladies and gentlemen, as Mrs. Fletcher in this commercial.

Perhaps I had put too much pressure on Big Boy Phone. Maybe it couldn’t take the heat from the kitchen flames I had fanned it while it was cooking with pots and pans and I’ve completely lost the direction of where this idiom is going. Maybe I am just not tech-savvy.

Either way, I am fine to deal with a phone with too-fancy features, as it’s almost always a great excuse to hang up on people or not return calls. However, I’m one of those freaks who does not enjoy being late because I don’t get to have my morning bowl of Special K with blueberries.

And so I end this first part with a sense of hope, as I will relay to you the impulsive 1-minute decision I made to purchase the LG Xenon via Rogers’ online store. As I sat at Kaldor, creating phone montages and buckslips for local banks advertising phone plans and deals on $0 phones and 100 minutes les jours de la semaine, I stared at the Photoshop-cropped image of the LG Xenon before me, all 1000+ px at 72 dpi, and I thought, “Hey, this bitch don’t look so bad—and I’m fucking paying for WAP browsing and can’t even use it on my Big Boy-Mrs. Fletcher fucking smartphone!”

The $50 mail-in rebate from Rogers was also not a bad thing, although having to extend my contract to another 3 years in return feels slightly similar to selling your soul to Satan disguised as a doughnut vendor.

And so, I will be receiving my new LG Xenon (ie, Teenager Cellphone) in the Saturday mail. Updates on my reaction and first thoughts to my first non-Nokia phone in my life to follow. I’m quite excited, to be honest, despite the fact that it’s about 80% more juvenile than Big Boy Phone.

I don't know who that bitch on the right is, but if Ally McBeal's fake daughter has an LG Xenon, I don't have high hopes of it being a smart-businessphone to grow into. Wait, is the chick with the open mouth from the "new" Melrose Place or something equally lame from the network formerly known as the WB?

If all goes well, many of you will be like, totes receiving SMS messaaages about like, my new haircut and like, my new Neutrogena ad where I pretend to splash water on my face, and the supercute guy who totally checked me out on the B-line 5 years ago. I’ll FB ya’ll, for shizzle. Seacrest out!

Lots of lovely things happening, one of which is our friends’ Ross & Grace’s engagement (was that rendered grammatically correct?)! Super exciting news, and given all the warmth and love that they’ve been receiving, I can think of no other couple who deserve it!

Of course, there is this damning photo that shall now forever exist in the bowels of the internet…

My apologies to Grace.

As for other news, I am doing alright at Kaldor.

I’ve received my first batch of business cards, which was relatively exciting until I discovered that I didn’t have much opportunity to use it. It seems like such a grown up thing to have it, and very much a stark contrast to the ones we make by ourselves as students. It’s much less obnoxious, for sure. It becomes so much less about self-promotion and the whole “Look at me! I need a job!” thing. Mostly it’s due to my limited network, of course, and I am excited for that time where I can confidently hand it over not to the likes of Trung or Stokoe, but to people who I have the possibility of establishing a Kaldor-endorsed work relationship with.

There is much more responsibility, and the past couple of weeks (and this unfolding one) have been trying and a little stressful. Although it hasn’t been without its nice moments as well. I am getting back into the swing of things, as well as getting to know my co-workers and beginning to collect the stories & conversations that lovely (and hopefully enduring) friendships can be based on. I enjoy the feeling of being their colleague, and not “the new girl,” and am flattered by the respect and consideration that each of them offer me. It’s a wonderful feeling to be regarded like this, in a way that your opinions and suggestions carry a certain weight and that while carrying these out might not always be the best, they are, at the very least, worth listening to.

I am both intimidated and excited by what Kaldor has in store for me, and what I can offer in return.

Hopefully I don’t get fired by the end of the week.

I admit, it’s been kind of tough to write these days. Back in the day I used to be able to shit out entry after entry about my current state of affairs. Every single detail was feared to be forgotten, each sulyap (that’s Tagalog, learn it) of life dissected and discussed in raving entries of who said what and how that made me feel.

Now I’ve settled into a nice old-lady routine, I suppose. Work, Trung, Hugo, sleep.

I think it pays to be a bit more reserved, but of course, many things suffer in return (such as this blog). I used to have much more to say, or perhaps more confidence to say it. I forget stories now, and only recall them when it isn’t so crucial to write down. Stories about my father, my sisters, my brother. I used to write about my mum all the time, but now that’s just me reaching into a well of still water. I miss her very much, and now I feel a certain amount of reverence to my memories of her.

My father has similar funny adventures, but somehow I just can’t quite write it into words. He’s much more interesting to talk about than write about at this point, maybe because of his funny accent and third-person perspective on everything.

He’s just turned 60 and loving his new senior citizen card. He gets discounts and free coffee, but that 10% is never enough for him, it seems. He shakes his head and sits tiredly on chairs, completely embracing the fact that he is old, and mumbles things like how the lady at the House of Polvoron doesn’t treat elders right because they don’t give discounts on the regular polvoron. He compares the prices of the Jolly Hotdogs from Jollibee, and recently yelled at me for not asking him for his card to get a discount on my McDonald’s coffee, which in Manila costs about 45 cents.

But at the same time, he laughed somewhat bitterly, a little hurt, when he told me about how he fell down and scraped his knee in Chinatown. It wasn’t so much the bruise that bothered him, but the young lady who exclaimed as he fell, “Ay, nahulog si lolo!” (“Ay, grandpa fell down!”)

Gildo Ngo is realizing his mortality, I guess, and I think it’s interesting how it alternates between joy for his laminated senior citizen card (the size of a cassette tape) and slow acceptance that he is aging, in all of his big, shirtless Buddha-belly glory. His bones hurt a bit more, and he knows he nags waaay more than he used to. But at the same time new things are happening and changing—like Dianne getting married, all his children growing up to not be serial killers, me finding a good place in Vancouver—that I hope might keep him a little more excited and optimistic about where things are headed. God knows at 60, he fucking deserves it.

I think I know the reason why weddings in Manila and such places are such a big deal. For a Catholic country where divorce actually does not exist, all the hoops to jump through are there to make sure you will be married until one of you dies.

You don’t get married on a whim in the Philippines. You want to get married, you have to fucking prove you want to get married. In so many words, the Philippine Church will force your ass to cash that cheque your mouth wrote.

Halfway through the process of visiting various church offices and getting priests to sign and co-sign papers and bans and vows and documents to put up; dealing with insane relatives and wedding planners and florists and photographers, etc, I’m sure the question is asked, “Is this worth it?” and hopefully, usually, it is.

Just like my theory on beaurocracy—it exists to test the human will.

For me, I’ve seen my sister and her new husband’s story from the beginning, and I don’t quite know how to relay how immensely proud of them I am. The wedding video has had quips of looking like a Korean telenovela, similar to the ones my grandmother watches until 4am, but looking back, I think it really was kind of like that.

Very surreal, whirlwind, and ultimately rewarding experience—and that’s just coming from me. I can’t even imagine what it is like for Dianne or Moon Yong, who have had so much to go through all these five/six years, and how crazy it is that they actually got a happy ending.

With the New Year as a nice bookmark, we will begin to refocus, readjust, and reassess. We’ll float back down from the sequins and floor-length gowns, from the tuxedos and the ballrooms, warm wishes and besos, and back onto our office chairs, our sofas and kitchen slippers. We’ll go to bed and wake up early once again, back to work, back to school—hopefully with another milestone and event to place into our memories, something to keep us going for the next few months until we need to break our routines again.

Now the celebrations are over, and we’re all starting to go back to our lives, and Dianne and Moon Yong will begin their second chapter. Many of us are nursing a cold and sore throat (I blame all the beer and yelling and the lack of sleep), phlegmmy and tired, all the while rediscovering what we have all put on hold while preparing for the wedding. For some of us, it’s a dreary and depressing reality to come back to. But it’s bits like this wedding that will hopefully keep us from dying out, letting us dream a little bit, forget who we are and what we do, even just for a little while. We all need that, anyway.

It’s easy to think that Dianne and Moon Yong’s wedding was soley for them, but at least I know for me and my family, it gave us a little bit of a reprieve from the normal, from our responsibilities at the office or at home, and made us feel a little bit more important than usual. We all got to suspend our realities for one evening, and focus all of our attentions towards something wonderful, and to do something special for someone we love dearly. And I lost 7 pounds!

Looking around the back-end of Facebook, it surprises me how much we freak out about privacy, despite how open we seem to say we are to social media. If anything, it gives this outlook that seems to be cradled in the comfort of non-contact interaction, and almost passive-aggressive tendencies. It brings back things that only John Hughes and high school dramas and cliques can illustrate. Or that Mandy Moore movie:

Landon: Listen, Jamie, I was hoping we could run lines together?
Jamie: Okay, but just not so anybody knows, right?
Landon: Well I just figured we could surprise everyone with how good I get.
Jamie: Like we could be secret friends.
Landon: Exactly, exactly it’s like you’re reading my mind.
Jamie: Great umm… maybe you could read mine.
[she gives him a cold glare and turns away]
Landon: Jamie, Jamie I can’t just be your friend.

Haha some that I’ve come across imply so much panic and confusion. And I admit, I totally understand, like not wanting certain friends to know you are friends with someone else, or not having to decline a friend request so you don’t get into the awkward discussion of how you don’t reaaaalllly like them thaaaat much…

From the Facebook Help Center:

I don’t want to be seen on my friends friendlist, to other than my friends. Now my friends friends can see me and send me a friend requests!!?? Is the only option to cancel my account?

how can I Hide my friends from people who are on limited profile ?

How to hide friends in the first place ? if i don’t want certain people to see them ?

BRING BACK ABILITY TO HIDE FRIEND LIST . FROM FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!

How do I hide new friends from being posted on my wall.

Soooo… is there a way to NOT show on my wall when i have made friends with someone?!?!? … i think ur right, in the old privacy settings, that was an option, but not anymore, or is it hidden somewhere?

And my personal favourite:

how do you delete all your friends!!

I was at my godfather’s house for dinner the other evening, and we were talking about how their kid (my cousin) freaked out at a school play when he saw his parents in the audience. My aunt was saying how it was because the kid was afraid of his parents making fun of him for it.

Other people around the table went, “Aw…” like, poor kid!

Then my mind flashed back to a photo of my brother at around 3 or 4 years old, dancing for the camera.

And behind him was my mother in a pink dress, actually pointing and laughing at him, with her mouth wide open and calling others beside her to point and laugh too.

My mum was so awesome. Shame that I only had to find out so late.

It seemed too one-sided, like a bunch of links being thrown into a bowl for quantity’s sake. Or just yelling an eloquent 140-character sentence into the air on top of a mountain and waiting for an echo of a response back in the afternoon.

Overwhelming number of suggestions for “cool” which I couldn’t follow the responses for.

Nobody quite talks to each other. It felt like an art opening a party where people didn’t quite know each other or wanted to know each other. “Hey, sup–see ya!”

To sound like a 13-year old girl, I like Facebook more.