listen to the randomness.

• received email that afg assignment MIGHT come in april. that got me excited. i'm baaaaaaaaaaad.

• and i went home past 7 pm. chris and i waited inside the rocking pumpboat. it was windy and the winds howled and rocked the boat and caused it to make lots of sounds, creek, for one. after a while a lady with LOTS of jackfruit came. sacks after sacks of jackfruit. the porters loaded her stuff at the front, the empty space at the nose of the pumpboat. and after more moments we left. we learned the lady decided to rent the pumpboat and we only had to pay PhP 15.00 after all. Chris earlier wished she would. today is his lucky day, late as the luck may have come, but still...

• in the middle of the ocean over the waves and the roller coaster ferry ride i saw a scene i have so badly wanted in my whole life. i have only 2 dream shots in my mind that i wish i could take before i die. and this could be the third. i so badly wanted to take that shot. (and i wrote under a really bad drawing: "i'm never a good illustrator but that's how exactly it looked like, if your imagination is good"--done using colored pens. really bad drawing)

            the boatman had his back at us. it was drizzling. he was carrying a fog lamp that doubles       as a safety lamp. he was facing the sea. on his head is a red shirt he tied like he would a bandana. he wore a white shirt and it was flapping in the cold, january ocean wind. the lights from the fog lamp spills on the boatpost, on his sturdy, muscular shoulders, on his temples and the red shirt tied around it, on to the sacks of jackfruit dirty and sticky from the latex, through the slits and cracks of wooden boat posts. and everywhere around, it's pitch black. i get ocean sprays from time to time, on my face. i taste salt as i wipe it from my face. in the distance, tiny dots of orange city lights outlined the sky.

              i so badly wanted that shot. but i didn't have a camera. and if i did, it would take a lot more luck, more than chris' to get me what i wanted. oh. well.

maybe next time.

• thoughts on last night's discussion: part 1 -- it is not proper to discuss african or asian politics and economy lacking extensive reading. more so if you do not know where that nation you’re talking about is located. because eventually you will imbibe a wrong impression to your listener. gut feel is okay if your discussion is based on a premise that it is going to be a dumb discussion, because international affairs, international security and economic stability cannot be discussed using gut feel and especially lacking adequate reading. wrong impression picked up by a handful of people has the tendency to spread like dengue and exponentially multiple like overpopulation. in the end what you'll get is a whole community believing that the philippines is better than africa when we actually aren't. we're just much fairer in color but really, we're not. and some years back some philippine city's hdi is actually comparable to that of ghana. of course that can be challenged because hdi is not always the perfect measure to everything. oh. well.

• thoughts on last night's discussion: part 2 -- and i know that imelda marcos did a lot of "good job" to the philippines. but i am not buying your opinion. because if you compare the philippines' state during her years of "good job" with the kind/pace of development in other nations (or asian nations, to be more specific), given the same amount of money, it remains inferior. and of course, the killing and disappearances and the abuses that happened as a result of her and her family being in power is something that the beautiful buildings and lovely city cannot compensate for. you know that.

• i like making fun of hypocrites, and in that sense, i am really, and purely evil.