The Last Wave

Went body boarding today at Bondi. As soon as I dove in the ice water instantly gave me brain freeze. Bondi Beach's way of saying "welcome back, tropical native boy."

I know it's annoyingly cliche for surfers (pros and wannabes alike) to wax poetic about being one with nature and feeling the rush when the waves scoop up your board and all that but based on whatever little experience I've had so far, it's true. Granted, I've spent more time being underwater than above, but even being submerged and spun around like laundry provides moments of clarity. Like: "God I hope nobody laughs at me when I surface."

My favourite part is definitely the waiting. You're sitting on your board, legs dangling underneath you, waves gently rocking you back and forth as you patiently wait for the right one to come along. It's here where I find myself thinking of things I normally wouldn't. Like: "If a Great White swam underneath me, would it go for my legs first since they are as of the moment the easiest bits to reach? Or would it go for the board since by presumption it would appear to be the meatier part of the meal? Or would it perhaps ignore me and instead go for the fat swimmer a few meters away because from my clouded perspective, he does somewhat resemble a pregnant walrus?"

Paddling away far from the noisy middle aged beach goers and their urinating children, I pass on wave after wave, content on just floating and enjoying the afternoon sun. Ordinarily I'd be aggressive and try to catch every wave I can but today I decide not to. If the perfect wave's there she'll come. Maybe I'll catch her and maybe I won't. For now I'm perfectly content floating. And thinking of things other than getting mauled by a 30 foot shark...

What would have happened if I had stayed and not flown home? Where exactly is home anyway? Whenever I'm in Manila and my friends ask me when I'm leaving I always say "I'm going home in a few days." And when I'm in Sydney and my dad asks me when I'm flying back I always say "I'll be home on December." I think I currently live in two places at the same time. My mind and my body are still playing catch up to each other, and when they finally merge, I wonder where I will find myself at.

I look across the water and see the real surfers passing the time. They look out towards the horizon like I do. I wonder if in some far away beach, other people are staring out and if so, would it be possible to see them if I paddled out a little further? I have dorky little bodyboarding fins on, of course I could. How hard could it be?

Finally the perfect wave comes and I catch her perfectly, riding her all the way back to shore. The ride is crisp, perfect, and like all good rides I really don't want it to end. But like everything else, it does and I find myself back on the beach, sand up my shorts and a smile on my face. The water is freezing but it somehow just reminds me of how great it is to be alive. This will do. For now.

Just like that. Back in Sydney. One minute I'm packing my bags (last minute again, as always), the next I'm UN-packing them in my flat. There's a roach problem, so I've been killing the fuckers with orange-scented Mortein. There's something gleefully macabre about seeing insects writhe and die while your nostrils are being flooded with the scent of Tang.

I am so damn jet-lagged even if I have no reason to be (Sydney is a mere 3 hours ahead). But when you've been sleeping at 5am Manila time for the last couple of days, then going to bed 8am when you have to be at work at 9am is going to be a problem.

It's so strange to suddenly be the darkest skinned person walking in the streets again. Even more so now because I have the closest thing to what I can call a tan. I should try my best to keep it.

It's also strange riding a bus once more because for awhile there I was really beginning to enjoy driving my car again. Rest in peace baby black Civic. May you go to an owner who'll love you, cherish you, and give you a good Tire Black once a week. Smell nice for him and keep the CD player working, because it's the sound of music that hides those squeaks and creaks which betray your age. Give him kick ass dates that last till sunrise and don't overheat or blow a tire, especially when the spare's flat too, because girls don't like being stranded in the middle of nowhere. Maybe three years from now when I'm finally home I'll be driving down South Super in my BMW X5 (I'll afford it by then) and I'll see FDM 234 a couple of lanes ahead and I'll gladly speed and cut my way just to see who's driving you. Hopefully he'll have replaced your eroding rubber steering wheel with a nice wooden Momo and I hope to God there are no fur dice hanging from your rearview mirror. Don't be jealous when you see me in my new pimped out ride because even if I've moved on, the memories I've had with you will stay (and how). I'll honk my horn and wave at the driver and he'll probably think I'm some gay wanker trying to pick him up but then I'll just smile and speed off, him totally not knowing the history you and I once had. Peace bro. Been nice driving you. I really wish I had a name for you now...

I realize I just wrote a farewell letter. For my car. I need to sleep.

New pics

One of my resolutions for 2006 is to not just shoot pictures but to post them. So here you go, first batch of random images for the year:


Harbour Bridge by night.


Mural


Pool of Light.


Footprints, Port Macquarrie.


Bus stop (taken from the hip).


Opera House


Punta Bulata sunset.


But is it really?

It's in the blood

Kaila just got her own Nikon D70 and has been putting it to good use. Check out her online gallery here.

Boxes

One of the first things I did this year was help my dad clean out 10 years worth of junk from our house in Bacolod. Boxes and boxes like you wouldn't believe. I think it's because as a family we are a bunch of pack rats who can't seem to let go of anything even after we're done with it. I am a notorious receipt hoarder, even ones from McDonalds, because I have this recurring fantasy in my head that someday I just might bite into a McNugget with a cockroach leg embedded in it and I'll need the receipt to sue.

I've been improving though. I am trying to apply my scriptwriting professor's philosophy ("Be mercenary. If it's not absolutely needed, get rid of it) into my swag hoarding world. Moving into a smaller flat in Sydney has helped in a way. I used to have little nooks and crannies to tuck away shoeboxes worth of junk. Now my tiny closet threatens to burst each time I attempt to stick in one more ATM transaction slip.

So back to my dad's house. Kaila and I dug into a couple of boxes and were amazed at the number of things that we found: a veritable time capsule of our personal histories. Oh, and a TIME back issue:


Pre-couch jumping days.


We dug up some Jurassic Archie Comics. And if there's one thing you never throw away, it's comics. Especially if a photo of your younger sister's high school sweetheart is taped to one of the covers...


Kaila looks like she is nine years old. And is that an arm grazing her boob?? Grr...


Also unearthed was an old cassette tape of mine circa 1991:


Bel Biv Devoe. I know. I apologize.


But the find of the day had to be an autograph book owned by my other sister Gabbi.



Why she kept an autograph book and got members of her own family to sign it I never figured out. I guess it's one of those Sweet Valley High/ My Little Pony collecting-secrets-thing that only pre-pubescent girls understand. But of course I signed it anyway. Read on and see how cool I was at ten years of age:



1) I obviously wasn't born in 1985, so I have no idea why my birthdate says so.
2) Bacolod used to have just 5 digit telephone numbers. My friends envied mine because it ended with 007.
3) Despite being an avid member of the Philatelic (stamp collecting) Club, I never got beat up in school.
4) "Taxidermy and shooting"- I used to enjoy shooting small creatures then stuffing them with cotton. You can imagine the horror of my environmentalist dad.
5) Who didn't like We Are The World?? Our entire class would get together during recess and sing this song with matching invisible earphones held up to our ears and we would argue who would get to sing who. The cool guys always got to do the Michael Jackson parts, the potentially gay ones did Cyndi Lauper. I think I was Kenny Loggins.
6) Okay, Drew Barrymore in E.T. and Firestarter. Yes. Brookie in Blue Lagoon. Of course. But Gretchen Barretto? What was I thinking? I think it was because she was the Heart Evangelista of her time just before she did all those classy Seiko skin flicks. Whatever. My taste has evolved since then.
7) "Dance: Break." Yesss. My signature move? The headspin. No one in grade school could touch me. Come to think of it, this is probably why no one ever beat me up. You don't mess with a stamp collecting breakdancer.

And of course, no autograph book would be complete without a LOVE portion:



1) "Have you ever been in love?" In retrospect that answer should have been No. But when I was ten I thought Jamie from Voltes V was THE ONE. And she was a cartoon.
2) Notice how my secret crush is so TOP SECRET that I couldn't just write it, I had to draw a STAMP of it.
3) "How did you MET?" They must have printed out this book from the same factory as Hello Kitty merchandise.
4) "Pretty, Blonde, Funny." I really have no recollection as to who this is. Maybe it's because it was so Top Secret I erased it from my mind. With a stamp.
5) Notice how I answered "do you believe in long engagements?" with a confident "Of course." I probably didn't even know what an engagement was.
6) "Love is loving someone and someone loving you." Ah, if it were only that simple.

By afternoon's end we had succeeded in throwing out a sugarcane truck's worth of trash, but not without stumbling on a few other gems:

Faded childhood photos. Looking at the massive smile on my face as I swam and frolicked in the beaches and farms and mountains, I'm really glad I grew up in Bacolod and not in Manila.

(I wonder, in this digital age where pictures never fade, will people still get as sentimental when they look at them 20 years from now?)

National Geographic back issues. Like comics, you just can't throw these away. My dad's National Geographic magazines were my inspiration for taking up photography. Then later on in life I stumbled across his OTHER magazines. Which is a different blog entry altogether...

I came across an old high school notebook and I couldn't answer any of the trigonometry problems that were in it.

I came across my mom's old letters and I remembered how beautiful her handwriting was.

So I started the day with the intention of throwing out trash and ended up walking down memory lane. Sometimes it's a really great place to visit. And doing it at the start of 2006 somehow makes it more poignant. To completely move forward you gotta go backwards. And smile and say goodbye and chuck 'em all in a cardboard box.

My token fireworks shot for the year.

2006 is MINE. I know it.

Have a good year everyone. Hello to people who've been kind enough to drop me a message.