i cant design things for sh--

so I changed the vivacious orange background to the plainest layout in the world ever. I figure that I might compensate with pictures.

Along a shop-lined street in Naples, in 2010

Above used to be the background. Thank you for reminding me that not all pretty things suit everyone. The picture itself was taken in 2010, as my Aunt and her partner were looking around in the dress shops and I had found myself gravitating towards the cheerful visual chaos that was the tile shop where a lone yellow labrador sat ever so still. I was reminded of Rex, our own labrador, at home, splayed over the cold tiles. Italy reminded me of home in more ways than one, and it baffled me to no end. 

(My mother would then chastise me for not buying at least a fridge magnet. Is it or is it not a unique Filipino trait to know how far one has traveled by the magnets one has on the fridge? I'm not quite sure myself. 

Seriously considering featuring that one of these days. But then, one can argue that keychains are also another yardstick through which worldliness is also measured.)

so, today

Meh there is always a meandering stage. I always meander. Maybe I like the word itself, all mellow and whimsy and easygoing.

I should really be starting to make this blog about something. Maybe I'll write about past trips and then put on the pictures. Maybe I'll write about dreams? Flash fiction? Longer fiction? Fiction outlines? Just put up pictures? Rant like the world is mine?

Today, I went to my old school, an ancient university, the oldest in the country (Hey! You're not allowed to wear shorts in here!-security guard. YES BUT LET THE MIDDLE AGED LADY WITH THE SHEER LEGGINGS PASS RIGHT ON BY)

I met with my friend Tortoise, and Ponyo, and our teacher from grad school who is currently head of a CW center sat us down for a chat and some ice cream.

"This office is haunted," she calmy stated. She would return to find that the printer had produced paperwork, some survey sheets about children, "Completely no relation to what I do!" And poetry manuscripts had mysteriously found their way to her desk. She was completely, flabbergasted, although elegantly so. We stayed for a good couple of hours just chatting, before we took our leave to go have lunch, to energetically discuss A Song of Ice and Fire conclusion theories, before switching to a milk tea place where the conversation would veer off from stories about floods, to naming parts of the reproductive system in Filipino.

i am the most boring blogger on the face of the planet. Shet lang. I hope people from the MA program don't see this, identify me, and then subsequently kick me out.

"The nerve of you to write this way!" they would say, "The nerve of you to write this way!"

First

Hello, New Blog.

I don't know if these greetings are mandatory, but what does one say at the beginning of all things anyway?

"Say hello," is what I had always been told. Imagine if I had walked in on something like someone with their pants down.

At the beginning there was the Word, and that was how the universe came to be.

So, walking in on someone with their pants down: "Let there be light!"

Sounds like several levels of inappropriate. So...

again, hello New Blog. I apologize for the violent orange-ness of your background, but I promise you, that once I get a good background photograph that I am happy with, I will have it changed immediately. I worry that is it too bright for the eyes. I worry that it might not match with the material. I worry that I might have the material match the background, which should not be the case.

I'm not even entirely sure what to do with you. I don't write poetry. I don't travel as frequently as I please, or photograph as well as I please, as much as I please. I only have little patches of stories, and maybe that is where we'll begin.