[	Tags	|	annyong, bum, kimchi, moolah, tutor	]
[	boiling point	|	optimistic	]
[	LSS	|	fake plastic trees	]

January is not a bad start for me. I find myself waking up at 7 o'clock in the morning, commuting with the yuppies, walking approximately 200 meters,which is quite good for an exercise, taking the elevator to the 10th floor of a condominium, speaking in straight English for six hours, climbing down the building, and walking another 200 meters on my way home - every day. Every week I am four thousand pesos richer and so far, I'm loving it. I prefer to be a part-time English tutor to Koreans than be a professional bum at home. :)

Annyong!
Being an English tutor to Koreans is more of socializing with those Kimchi-eating pale Asians than teaching annoying brats and little schmucks in a prep school. I find the job enjoying because I am merely the type who gets sick of the humdrum of my world, hates getting stuck with someone or somewhere, and easily gets bored of anything mundane. I realized that instead of playing the role of a household chore manager, I might as well spend my day somewhere else. That, I mean ANYWHERE. Thank heavens my Korean employer saved me from my near extinction at home, or rather, winning that "PROFESSIONAL BUM Stage 1" award.

Koreans aren't dumb. I'm telling you. They are nice (how hackneyed) and friendly, though I think almost all of them have an inferiority complex because they don't speak English well in your first meeting. The perks? Instant superiority complex that will suddenly wear off on you the moment you find yourself gawking at your 11-year old tutee who keeps 1000-peso billsesses in his innocent fat wallet! LOL I guess I will choose to trade the superiority complex *effects* with those billfolds. Who needs it (superiority complex) these days, anyway?

 Tutoring is almost no-sweat. You just have to invest in your speaking skills because they traveled all the way here just to hear your voice and your accent, hoping that they will adapt your skills at the end of the day. Tip: Prepare infinite patience in repeating your words and sentences, carry a handy dictionary in your bag, and brace yourself in some unexpected act-outs in case you run out of words to define or explain a specific word. They are undoubtedly good in written exams because their educational system is committed to providing them with high-quality books. Gahd, I envy their fully-colored books with well-drawn graphics printed in almost every page of them. No wonder children enjoy reading and really having fun at school. Just imagine a Math book, which is not a popular book for most students in the Philippines, that feels and looks exactly like a comic book! How cool is that, eh?

The fun part is when my student teaches me how to speak mean words in Korean. Haha. Most of the time they request me to say a certain Korean word to the other Korean students in the room and they end up surprised and laughing and me clueless of what I have just uttered. LMAO I’ll leave some words here for somebody else’s fun:

Tak cho! – Shut up!

Babo – stupid

Jil – fvck you

In exchange, I taught them some Filipino words that they find interesting to tell their friends. Their top favorite Filipino expressions are:

Bakla tayo!

Bakla ka!

Panget ka.

Mahal din kita.

Antok na ko.

Tulog tayo.

Gutom na ko.

Ayoko sa’yo.

 
I swear, the whole room burst into laughter when one student went to the middle of the room and gagged out Bakla ako! in a dignified manner without even knowing the meaning of it!

[	Tags	|	2010, new year, resolutions	]
[	boiling point	|	thoughtful	]
[	LSS	|	bad things|jace everett	]

The mark of the beginning of the year for me is just a continuation of what I have left undone in the previous day, which is December 31. I don’t treat January 1 special because: one, the beginning of something wonderful does not necessarily happen at the first day of the year nor month; two, January 1 can be the second, tenth, or even one-hundredth day of any certain activity and event, say a project, a celebration of a relationship, or a strict course of diet to lose one’s weight; and three, how can you feel hopeful at January 1 when you feel lost and you are not really sure of the things you want to achieve in the year ahead. If everybody feels like jotting down their resolutions every January the 1^st then the best resolution would be: Always treat every day as if it is January 1 so that every day you write your resolutions fresh and work on them right away.

This is where you rebut that the first day of the year is supposed to give you the power to establish the goals you want to achieve and dream of anything you want to fulfill. It is like every New Year’s Eve is enchanted and it makes you excited to scribble your resolutions at the first page of your new journal. Well, do you really have to wait and save your energy every start of the year just to believe that you can actually aim and do something?

What I do like about January 1^st though, is that it gives you a second to look back and ponder on the mistakes you’ve committed. I do not say that I only mull over these things on January 1 but I am not quite sure of it myself. Maybe it really is an enchanted day. It is like a huge invisible stopper, a page break to every part of history connecting you to the preceding fractions of the year. On the other hand, January the 1^st is just an ordinary day with the opportunity for me to bridge my dreams with reality, an extension for me to work on my thesis, yet another day to watch dvds and read novels, and continue with what I have now and from where I have trailed off.

I do not oblige myself to do a set of things that aren’t me. Resolutions, I can do them whenever I feel like I need them. Nobody starts a ‘new life’ again and again every January 1 but rather everybody continues life from this day forward. If you always start a new set of breakable self-rules every after 365 days, then you do not end whatever it is that you have created and worse, you’ll lose the chance to learn from it.

[	boiling point	|	dorky	]
[	LSS	|	Death Cab For Cutie	]

Gwen Stefani must have inspired me. This morning is the earliest that I’ve risen from my bed in two dreadful but dreamy I’m-still-sleepy-at-one-in-the-afternoon months. I guess I owe it to her song “4 In the Morning”.

I know this sounds like an overreaction – but how can you blame my first early-bird-slash-early-worm morning though it feels heavenly groggy and my nocturnal nature is slipping out - but as I stagger into the kitchen overlooking the street blanketed with the warm seven o’clock sunrays sans the cancerous UV rays from our third floor flat perspective, all I can think of an adjective to describe the scene before me is Photoshopped! The contrast, hue, saturation, tone, and whatever technicalities you name it, Photoshop junkies(!), are just perfectly and harmoniously laid before my eyes as if the panorama was Photoshopped in my laptop.

Then I thought, if there is one word I can choose from my personal lexicon out from reading Classic novels and fiction novels from Gaiman, surprisingly, it’s Photoshopped? How bland! Seriously, for a fleeting moment I shudder as I briefly imagined a prayer thanking the Almighty of such a glorious day for me: Dear Lord, I praise you for this should-have-been-beautiful-or-perfect-sort-of-adjective Photoshopped morning! For that I guess I should rivet my prayer to “Dear Lord, just give me another day tomorrow and I promise to prepare my vocabulary tonight” right away!

Now I feel remorseful for my initial reaction. Overreaction. It must have been the daze a nocturnal person like me can expect from an unbelievably early day.

This is what you get for waking up early – and I love it!

Then I heard a familiar beep. It was my mobile.
Someone just texted me and I woke up.

It is 1:30 in the afternoon. Drat it!

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boiling point

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11:59
When was the last time I really talked about anything? I cannot remember anymore.
All i know is that I have been posting pictures instead of words in my blog site.
I just can't weave words into a good article.
Monologue.
I cannot express what I feel and think because I don't want to expose myself.
I detest revealing what my mind is processing or what my heart is ranting.
People will donate sympathy or begin to talk nonsense about something that
they have absolutely nothing to deal with in the first place.
They end up more emotionally involved than the protagonist herself.
I don't give free passes to my own circus.
I hide my weaknesses because I am saving them from suddenly committing
humility and feeling thankful and lucky at the
comparison of their state to mine. I don't want anybody to assume that
he is responsible for pulling me out of misery and depression.
I don't want to claim him as my super hero. Most of all, I don't want to be
labeled an emo.
I know a good number of people who already earned the title for themselves.

I am not a god. I am simply a dream, the kind of dream that you
unwillingly forget in the morning.
There are quite bold people who testify that I am somewhat a
living puzzle and a walking mystery.
Like a million hotchpotch digits I am hard to decipher.
I can't blame them. The thing is, I have been blocking them
from the start. I filter people and categorize them at the
first time of encounter.
I would just look at them and observe for a while and at the
end of the day I can predict 50% of their personality.
The other half I give them the liberty to paint for themselves
and hang on the wall for the spectators to criticize.

In a nutshell, I am partially misanthropist, and subject to volatility.