i call it living

this blogging thing is getting to me. me like eet!

After leaving Manila, I'm now living in a suburb five and a half miles away from town. The place is called Grandview Heights and I'm at 1 Chrysanthemum (If you're visiting, bring something nice ^_^). It's at the foot of a mountain called Isarog. The place has about five hundred people. Across a creek is a settlement for supposedly poor families. Supposedly, since while the place is called Urban Poor (so it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure out their social status), most houses are actually bigger than ours. They're actually bigger than all the houses here at "The Grandview Heights" which is such a paradox. What's more is they call it "Urban Poor" when nothing can be more rural than this. So I guess we just have a better name for a place. I wouldn't want to have an address on my ID saying I live at Urban Poor, Naga City. Come on, let's be truthful, who would want that? I'm not social climbing. It's just that I don't want to be down there either.

Anyway, this place, it's still to grow on me. It's your average sleepy little town. I don't think it's even on a map. Life here is very sedentary. People don't have what I used to, and what I still call life. There's absolutely nothing to give you the slightest amusement. I guess the highlight of the place is the little corner store where teenagers smoke cigarettes and dance on the streets and where mothers exchange stories about where their kids are and how important they are. It's hard not to eavesdrop. They're practically shouting. Every half an hour, the jeepneys would pick up or drop people from town. Those are about the only sounds you can hear. Well, other than dogs and crickets, I mean.

But rural living is great at times. I fell in love with the evening sky here. Nothing could be more serene at night when the only thing you could hear are frogs, crickets and the water at the creek. And your air conditioning unit. It's almost picture perfect when the full moon goes behind a leafless tree. Like the ones you see on postcards. Or at horror movies. You get goosebumps when the cold wind swoops down from the mountain and hits your skin. And when your hair dance in the wind, you get that romantic feeling. So now I know why there are lots of kids in here: no other entertainment plus the background. The perfect recipe for romance. ^_^

I am not a rural person. I live in the outside world. Sure, serenity is great but if serenity happens all the time it gets boring. And I'm not old enough to enjoy that kind of separation from the outside world. I'm young and I live in the now. I love so many things non-rural. I love the crowd at clubs where you have barely a space to move around. I love the sound of techno music on full blast banging against my eardrums. I love to let go and make love to the beat. I love the smell of smoke on my shirt after a night out. I love the taste of alcohol shared with strangers. And I love skin. Lots of skin. I love going to the mall and watching a movie alone so no one else can share my popcorn. I love eating on restaurants where they serve dishes with crazy French, Japanese, Italian or any other names. I love watching people from my coffee table outside Starbucks. I love buying underwear when I don't have anymore to wear because I don't do the laundry. You may call it overindulging. I call it living.

I miss a lot of things I love. I miss my friends, the people that I used to work with, the baristas at Starbucks, the crew at McDonalds and KFC, the waiter at Le Ching and Jack's Loft, the cabbies, the train. I miss the train.

I am not a rural person. Being one is still to grow on me. But for now I guess I just have to exchange the things I love with this evening sky.