The rice tasted like plastic

So after leaving my house at 7 pm, boarding a plane at 1am, for a 12 hour flight, and then stopping over at Korea for 4 hours for another 4 hour flight, and then sitting with 7 other people in a 5-seater for an hour drive, and after relieving my tension by eating real rice (and processed chicken), I am in the Philippines.

Thank god I bought that PSP.

My PSP, iPod Touch, and laptop all died, and my DS is all that survived the trip, battery-wise. I would not survive here myself if I didn’t have a transformer. I’m desperately trying to access the internet on a flaky 10 kilobyte per second prepaid connection. I am still grateful to my aunt for buying me the minutes though, better than nothing. The good news is that a food is no better than when cooked at its origin. Nothing like a yaya frying bacon.

I’m not used to sleeping on a spring matress, I usually pass out on a futon with a foam on top, although the multitude of pillows is comforting. The air conditioning is nice although right now it isn’t too hot - yesterday was unbearable. Oh well, I’m so glad my grandmother built a pool in the backyard, with a shade covering the whole back porch no less.

I’m probably going to the mall in the afternoon once the cousins and relatives get here from Manila (I’m in Batangas). We’re going to eat probably at a nice restauraunt called Flavors of China. I also can’t wait to go shopping for clothes. I always enjoy trips to the Surplus Shop to purchase rejected clothes, like my favorite pair of pants, with rear pockets on all sides.

I can’t get my mind off her.

The electronic screens, the earbuds - I still hear her voice and see her face. It’s in flashes, in various emotional expressions. I’ll hear the ringing of an ice cream man’s bell, and see a smile on her face. I’ll turn to the window and hear her laugh. I miss her. I hope she misses me too. I really screwed up our relationship and I don’t know if I can fix it.

Amazing how you can work for seventeen months only to break it in a couple of days. Or was I already alienating her from the start? Had I blinded myself from the beginning? Perhaps I was doing it all wrong all along. She says she feels powerless. She feels jailed. I tried to empower her, set her free. But as I try to defend my behavior she feels victimized. I won’t have her go back. It would be better that she keep smiling even if she no longer kisses me to drop a mint in my mouth, or surprise knocks on my door. Better that she lives without a thought of me than she suffers in my arms.

But I don’t want to lose her. I want to change. I want to fix it. I want to run back home and tell her I’m sorry, but apologies don’t fix disasters. I need either a bailout, a miracle, or a time machine. I’m so motivated to move and yet I’m a thousand miles away. It seems I’m inescapably reminded of a previous life. Except that emotional dilemna followed me on a cruise ship and not in my vacation home.

Maybe all I’ll have left are these pictures in my wallet. Or maybe I’ll be able to sit on that cloud in the end.