Pasensya.
Today, I have 5 months, 4 days left to stay in Singapore. I give myself a warm pat on the back for making it this far (PBB contestant, isdatyu??). Patience is a quality I’m not really known for having much. If you know my stories and rants, living in Singapore has been a constant struggle. Moving here 19 months ago, I least expected this from an industrialized country. I’ve tried to get out of this mess a long time ago, but well, I’m still right here.
When I said I don’t have much patience, I guess it all really depends on the context. I’m probably the most pathetic self-taught pianist to boldly try a Tiersen’s music. I spend 2 hours in one-sitting on my semi-weighted keyboard just to finish 3 or 4 bars of music, which is perhaps just 10 seconds long. And I haven’t even perfected it. But in the end of my practice, with my sored and strained fingers, I’m happy.
I tried surfing once in Desaru (Malaysia, not a Japanese village despite sounding like one), and I braved its mighty waters, it smashes right against me, waves hit my board fiercely, it went literally flying tagging along my leg. But I never gave in. I’m the kind who doesn’t give up easily if I’m into it.
Could you imagine that at my very mature age of 27 I’m still hoping (onlyy tinnny bit) for a career change? (Rhetorical question, don’t answer.) Last week, I started doing an audio-visual production for my sister’s wedding coming by the end of the month, which is next week actually. On my first day with the project, at 2 o’clock in the morning, I checked my time. I spent close to 4 hours playing around a convoluted Adobe software only to finish the day with a 10-second animation. That’s an average working time of 24 minutes PER second of edited video. Great. 180 more seconds to go as my planned AV is 3 minutes and 10 secs long. If I will be working on the same pace, I still have 4,320 more minutes to work on, which is equal to 72 hours of constant work. No sleep, no eat, no toilet break, no nothing but the computer and me.
But still, I think the 10-second animation I’ve started doesn’t look that bad. Not the spectacularly-breathtaking-eyegasmic-sick kind, but it’s neat. That’s probably the safest adjective for it. Neat. (I’ll reserve that spectacularly-breathtaking-eyegasmic-sick kind for later on).
What I’m trying to say is that I persist in all things, even when I don’t like it. But sometimes, you just ask yourself, what is all about these sacrifices? What is the point of staying? You give your best shot but did they appreciate it? No.
My boss just came back from his glorious overseas vacation (of course, leave with pay whereas I don’t get a single hour of paid leave in my entire 2-year contract. I’M NOT LYING.). He has been relentlessly asking me for another year contract extension. I guess this is the 4th time he asked me about it and the rumor spread like fire. Sooner, all the other people around me were asking about it. I always keep my cool and say I’ll have to think about it because 5 months is still a long time.
See? I’m not that bad and I even gave him hope. Knowing inside me that the likelihood I’ll stay is if and only if they give me at least 250,000 PH pesos per month. Tax-free. Fine, even if it’s gross. I would even fix them coffee everyday.
Saying this answers my question earlier about making sacrifices. The obvious answer for me is because of money. To buy me security; pleasurable tangible things; investments, etc., but how much would you really be contented? How much is enough? More than any mathematical challenge, it’s harder to set the margin when to say that sacrifices are worth it. That is relative.
What is my own margin? I looked around me. I see my things. Although I don’t have a fancy iPhone 4 (I’m using an obscure Siemens phone, displaying the least possible colors on its LCD without being greyscale, and decent enough to have a poor 1.3MP camera), I have a relatively new laptop, a good dSLR and several lenses, photo printer and other photography and videography gears, my M-Audio 88-keys of course, and other minor gadgets and things. I don’t skip meals or starve myself, and I even have spare for savings and help at home. This is how I made the conclusion that I’m not the most unfortunate person in the world, financially speaking.
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I’ll end this post with a simile. My patience is like food. Not because it’s edible or delicious, but for the similar reason that it has an expiration.
I’m sure you logged on your facebook account today. Browsed for a couple of minutes, typed something on your wall, typed some more on other people’s wall, checked your messages, chat for a bit, etc., but try to quickly take a look at how many friends you have. Is that 487 people, right? Do you know all of them? If you do, congratulations. You can get the congeniality award. If you don’t, well, you are just like me and perhaps almost everyone else.
Roughly half of my friends are probably cyber friends, which could be better translated as either: someone who just added me randomly, or friend of a highschool friend’s cousin (Stop making than mental tree diagram). Why do I confirm them? Because.
Humanity is swelling up. Our environment is contracting. You don’t know what you need and who you might need for things that are yet to come. If you are the confident type, no problemo. Competition is apparent, and these days, having links and the right contacts has proven greater results than a double major degree with honors, maybe.
And that’s not even me. So, the chance that I will be indebted is larger. If you think that this appears to be like some kind of human exploitation, yes, you are probably right to some extent, but each of us is a breathing commodity. Sometimes you provide for other people, other times you take something from them. That’s how it works.
And now with the new media, it is even more complicated. Internet and network technology has changed the face of how we communicate and interact. Facebook, twitter, instant messaging, video calls, and mobile phones are parts of a normal day. Not only they make connections easier, they also made it cheaper and efficient.
When I was in senior high school, only about 4 or 5 (out of about 130) have mobile phones. 11 years ago, I started college at the age of 17 and I still don’t have my own mobile phone. I guess I only had it when I was on my 2nd year, a Nokia 3210 (which I eventually lost). There was no facebook or twitter, but there’re yahoo messaging and friendster. Like there’s an unwritten rule against them, anyone whose age could pass as my parent doesn’t have web profiles. But sooner, they were quick to catch-up. Very much.
It comes with this technological innovation a lot of other things. Recently, OMG, LOL, and the heart shape were included in the dictionary. With the advent of video streaming, people get instantly famous. A Filipina, for one, is now a Hollywood sensation, care of YouTube. I get to watch movies and tv series right at the comfort of my own desk. Modernism has seeped even up to serious matters. People now give official judiciary statements via skype. Professionals work from home. Information spread lightning-fast that eventually led to upheavals in Africa, or amass donations for Japan’s recent tragedy.
But with all these positives, surely there’s a catch. Apart from more and more people become slackers, and less and less people know how to spell properly, people put behind proper etiquette on sociability. Everyone started to take it less seriously.
If you add someone as a contact in a social site, a brief message won’t hurt. Don’t just creep on the internet and blindly click on the ‘Add as friend’ button. People are not expecting a full autobiography or a 10-page ala slam book entry but there has to be some reason.
Some people send instant messages while they appear offline. I don’t know if anyone else finds this a little bit impolite, but I think it’s more proper to let the person know you are there and not a sleeping grayed smiley icon. It shouldn’t be one-way. If you are busy and you don’t want to be disturbed so you appear offline, then don’t chat. It’s that simple. What makes you think you can disturb others? Not that I care too much about these, which frankly, I don’t. But there’s just something in these acts that tells me it’s not the most correct thing to do, well, personally, I mean.
Going back to the reason why I accept blind invites, it’s because I’m not giving in. I know things change, and this is probably me again, scrutinizing single tiny details of things, but what is the point of this post? The point is, let’s not forget being humans.
I rarely read book twice not because I think it’s boring the second time around but more for the reason that I have a lot of pending titles I wish to read. Kafka on the Shore by H. Marukami is an exception. I finished reading it again recently and it’s still one of the better fiction books I’ve read.
The story revolves around 2 individuals: First, the supposedly world’s toughest 15-year old, Kafka Tamura, and his eventful fate for about a month or two, and the second, ageing Nakata, who has this weird ability of conversing with cats and has his own share of unusual experience when he was younger. It began with Kafka’s planned escape on the eve of his 15th birthday. Abandoning his only known relative, his father, he has no certain idea where to head next. His mom, together with his adopted sister, left them when he was still young. Primarily the reason why he left his hometown is because he is on the run from something that would destroy him forever, if he stays any longer.
Meanwhile, Nakata leads a sedentary life, barely getting by the Governor’s subsidy, and busily finding lost cats takes up most of his day, a unique trade he secretly (and easily) excelled in. All of these changed course during his task to track Goma, a lost cat, and the sudden presence of an even stranger character, Mr. Johnnie Walker of Scotch Whisky.
It’s about the pursuit of love and truth in the midst of immorality, sexual desires, corruption, life and death, sorrow, jammed with riddles and an unexpected curse. Despite being highly fictitious with events like fish and leeches falling from the sky, a mysterious entrance stone to the other world, and presenting characters like Colonel Sanders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken) and Johnnie Walker (of Scotch Whisky), it will surely leave you thinking, which may not be in a very positive way, but something much profound and unimaginable.
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
615 Pages
The first and only book I read about running is a non-fiction called The Looniness of a Long-Distance Runner: An Unfit Londoner’s Attempt to Run the New York City Marathon from Scratch by Russell Taylor. I read it a couple of years ago, but I have a slight recollection of what it’s all about. A man is trapped in a position with a challenge that he couldn’t just pass up to save his face and for charity good deed. The consequence is, he has to run and finish a full marathon. It documents his running style and trainings in an enjoyable and extremely humorous storytelling. One specific scenario I remember from the book is how he was shocked to see the sign “WATER AHEAD” in one of his runs. Probably too exhausted and lacking oxygen in his head, he thought it’s like some kind of an obstacle relay and imagined he would have to wade across the waters! LOL. Here’s the link of something more I wrote about it when I first read it. I looked at the post date and it was hard to believe that was 3 years ago, and now I have to train for my own marathon experience. 
Too much self-assured I’ll find life elsewhere when I left for New Zealand, I dispose of most of my books to friends as keepsake. Unintentionally, I know precisely which title I gave to which friend, and the book about running, I hand over to Sheila, a friend from high school (and we went to the same uni as well). I’ll search the internet for an eBook copy of it, and I hope I could find one. I mention this not because I want to get my books back (haha, if any of those beneficiaries will be reading this), but if I were in the Philippines, it would be more convenient borrowing as I don’t really like to strain my eyes reading from the screen.
I have actually just finished, for the second time, Kafka on the Shore by Japanese author, H. Murakami, and I’ll probably write a different post about it.
Going back to running, the sport has become a craze recently, everyone has to admit that and I think there’s nothing really wrong about it. Although I’m not really a big fan of fads, it’s a good thing because perhaps people are starting to be more health conscious and a healthy nation is a wealthy nation (how’s that for a cliché, haha). You have to forgive me for my overworked lines; I guess my last post has been too dramatic so this is something to make up for it.
The last event I joined was Standard Chartered’s Marathon last December. I did the 21K, and I timed 02:30:09 precisely. When I join events, I always have in mind that I’ll give my best shot, which is something easily said than done because when I’m right there, I can’t avoid getting to the point that I’ll have to drag my limping body to the end. Possibly I just lack the proper training or I was reaching my human limitations physically. 21 kilometers is not a short walk in the park and so double of that, 42.195 kilometers is a long way away.
It’s definitely a great help, however, that I have comrades with me in this pursuit. For the most weekends, I run with Buffy (I met originally from a lomography club in the Philippines) and Ry (I met originally from a hiking mission in Malaysia). 
During weekdays, I sometimes run with housemates, or by myself (accompanied by Whitey, my running shoes). Speaking of, I replaced my Adidas shoes because it obviously needed to retire. After carefully researching on a new pair, I decided to get a Nike+ (Eclipse Lunarlon) because I can track my training distance, speed and pace times. It’s not really cheap at $203.00 (discounted from $239.00) but I figured this is the first shoes I purchased in Singapore after being here for a year and a half, so not really unjust. And, the retiring Adidas is a bit old and if you look at it, it’s definitely abused. Officially, I ran a 4.30-km, 10-km, and a 21-km race on it, and the amount of unofficial training runs is a lot more than that.
Since I mentioned I could measure my stats with the Nike+, well it’s true and not. I can’t determine my details yet because I have to have the Nike+ sensor with band when running. This is another $99.00 damage, so I’m still waiting for donors. Seriously, I think will get it in the future. The left shoe has a pocket-like hole sitting on its inner sole, resting inside behind the padding. This is where you put the sensor while you wear the band around your wrist pretty much like an ordinary watch.
I have 8 weeks ’til the big day, and I’m sure I’ll stop all forms of training for a week during my upcoming vacation by the end of April. There’re tons of information on the web about training plans, etc., and I still have to do more work on that to find out which suits me best.
The weekend is going to be great fellas.
