Bamboozled

My third brother is so obsessed with this local band “bamboo”. He loves to sing bamboo songs around the house, he would play his bamboo CD in our room at full blast, then leave the player running and scream his way to our other room and play more bamboo songs on the computer. He would again leave his playlist running on the computer and turn on the cable TV and wait for more bamboo music videos. He's like in a illusioned state everytime a bamboo song plays and his actions are consumed by the music, he forgets about everything whenever he is in his bamboo music bliss.

A couple of days ago, my brother was doing is regular noise barrage at home, he was screaming with his bamboo songs in the computer and he was so focused on the music that he forgot he had turned on the water in our bathroom earlier. The drainage in our bathroom had been clogging the past few days already, and he must have left the water running for quite awhile that it overflowed and flooded into my room.

The people at home called me up at work about the disaster. First thing that rushed to my mind was my bed. I don’t exactly have a bed, I sleep over two stacked mattresses laid on the floor. And since it was laid on the floor, I was pretty sure the water must have caught up with it. When I got home, I found out that fortunately only the mattress underneath got soaked and I still got the other one on top to sleep on later. Most of my personal trash were on higher grounds anyway, but for the love of the force, my star wars card collection was left on the floor during the flood. My third brother was already wiping the card album dry since he knew this collection is twice a hundredfold more expensive than his bamboo CD, and he knew what the dark side can do to me.

I called up my second brother and I told him I was home because our room is flooded. He said:

“You’re home so you can beat the crap out of the dog?”

He thought it was a pun that a flood in our room meant our dumb dog took a leak inside our room again.

Anyway, I never liked this bamboo band. I saw them on stage once about six months ago, I only joined a friend at this concert ground for a couple of beers. I don’t remember if I paid for a ticket to get in the place, I’d rather recall that I did not. The place was some empty parking lot where they threw in a lot of tables and chairs and the place was full of high school and college junkies. There was no band playing at the stage yet except for two girls who must have been dragging the show the whole night, and you could hear these junkies around me saying:

“Hey both of you! Get over with it!”

Then the band showed up on stage. The crowd stood up on top of the tables and chairs and they all cheered and roared like mad. I still had my feet on the ground but all I could see from my view point was everybody else's waistline. I only had one bottle of beer but I left the place anyway.

Whistle-stopped

Whistlestop is a small bar on jupiter st about a couple of meters from the corner of makati avenue, me and Imer used to go there quite a lot. The whole place looked like a mess, most of the people coming to this place looked like they’ve been drunk someplace else and they’re there to slow down with some beers. The bar's only attempt at entertainment is a cable tv showing some basketball game reruns or some late night news, which nobody watches anyway.

And the only thing I ever did eat at this place is their french fries. I always feel something starchy like fries would go well with alcohol in my stomach. Their fries though wasn’t as good as fast food fries but they were decent potato fries anyway. It reminded me of some cheap place back home that served imitated french fries, I was halfway done eating the food when I realized it was made from some other tuber crop.

Whistlestop is more like half a kilometer away from school. Though you’d never feel it to be so far because there are so many neon lights on the road going there at night. I would take a cab and I would be so busy staring at all the lights on the road, though I’ve seen them a hundred times over, and get to whistlestop without even starting up a dumb conversation with the driver. But me and Imer kept hanging out at this place because it is open 24 hours a day, and this is the place nearest to school where we could come in and drink anytime without getting to worry about closing time.

The only joints in this area that comes close to whistlestop for being open for the rest of the night are these strip clubs. There are a lot of strip clubs lining up in these streets and you’d always get to see a lot of old Yankees dressed like there is a beach on the other side of the street and old Japanese men in suits all over these strip joints. These geezers must have beaten the crap out of each other in world war 2 sixty years ago but they all seem to have a great time now thanks to these strip joints. And though they maybe open for the rest of the night too but hell their price of beer there must be fivefold, and it’s sick to be drinking around dirty old men making their moves on really ugly women squeezed on skimpy clothes.

Anyway I met up with Imer and his girl at school today, it was around 9 when he showed up. We took a bite at this fast food across school which didn’t have much to serve since they were closing up too. We then decided to go have some beers at whistlestop, his girl wanted to see our watering hole where we would waste ourselves years ago.

We got to the place and found that Whistlestop has closed down, the bar was stripped out of its signs and glass windows and the whole place was like in ruins. we were sort of surprised and I asked Imer if he knew why the place went out of business.

"Because both of us are their only customers who kept going back."

Edison and Bell's legacy

I woke at five this morning and I took the first flight to manila at daybreak.

I got myself a hotel room a little past noon. I was travelling alone but I took a room with two beds since I wanted to stay in a big space. The room already had a desk, a couch and a small table but the other bed came in handy when I needed a place to stack and sort out a lot of garment samples I would be sending to the office.

My father knew where I was staying and I knew he would be giving me a buzz soon enough. I was reading this magazine I bought earlier on the road today while waiting for the phone to ring, I tried to read it in bed but I can't turn on the lamp over my head. I pushed and pulled anything around it that looked like a switch to me until I got my fingers into a live socket and had a memorable moment with electricity. The darn lightbulb was missing inside the socket. Some guest before me must have stolen the bulb since it was probably the last item anybody will find missing inside a hotel room. Or maybe the bulb did get busted and the resident electrician just forgot to replace it with a new one. But I'd rather not tell them the damn thing is missing, I might end up paying for a new lightbulb on my way out of the hotel.

Then my doorbell rang, it was one of the hotel crew and he came to tell me that there is somebody waiting for me on the phone. It was my father but funny I didnt hear the phone ring. I later complained at the front desk that the handset in my room had trouble ringing, and for crying out loud the clerk told me that none of the hotel's house phones are ringing at the moment. Hell the whole situation annoyed me so much that when I got back to my room, I could now hear the rest of the room buzzers ringing from across the hall. I couldn't tell if another hotel crew is buzzing outside my room for me to answer my phone because the damn buzzing sensation has messed up in my head that I kept picking up my handset everytime a buzzer rang. It really did get on my nerves.

I had a couple of things to do for the rest of the afternoon than stay inside my room picking up the phone with an empty line. I first took a shower with the bathroom door open, since I was alone in my hotel room anyway and I needed a shower badly before I hit on the streets again. What I didnt see that there was a leak right on the side of the nozzle of the shower, and when it was turned on, a jetstream of water shot sideways. This jetstream had a perfect aim that it shot right out into the open bathroom door and into my room. I was already having a really bad day in this hotel that I stayed longer inside the shower, and by the time I got out, the room floor was all puddled with water. I took the bed covers and blanket from the other bed which I wouldn't be sleeping in anyway and used these sheets to wipe me some dry ground where I could change clothes.

Remind me to close the bathroom door when I take a shower tomorrow morning. And I hope they better clean up the mess in the floor when I get back, that room was already a poor excuse for edison and bell's legacy.

Another reason to cross the road

I was on my way to pick up my parents at the airport yesterday.

The road leading to the airport is pretty much narrow, there's only a single lane on both sides of the road, which means it will take a lot of nerves to overtake the car up front of you. But a lot of cars still pull such a stunt quite often on this narrow road, since most cars running on this road are in a rush to the airport. I was a little early on my way to the airport, but even if I were running late. I'm always too chicken to overtake the car up front and rather stay on my side of the lane.

There was a chicken up ahead on the road, I wasn't figuratively speaking of the other car up front of me, there was a real feathered fowl standing on the side of the road. And just like how that popular wisecrack joke went, this chicken was about to cross the road. It didnt cut its path in front of me but on the car ahead of me, I was talking to the chicken in my head to think twice about its reason to get to the other side, but at the same time I was very much interested to see it go underneath the tires of that speeding car. And in a fit of desperation, the chicken did cross the road.

SPLOTCH

I didnt get to see the chicken on impact, only a couple of feathers that flew to my windshield and what seems to be the rest of the chicken that came out under the car, which looked like it was unstuffed of its guts.

I got to the airport a couple of minutes later, I was a little bit early but heck the parking spaces were all taken, I was driving in circles til I thought about going back to check out what was left of that chicken, it wasnt that far from the airport. But I found the roadkill missing when I got to the spot, that chicken couldn't have possibly crossed the road without its guts. Somebody must have taken it since it was too good a fresh kill to waste. I knew why that chicken crossed the road, unconsciously it wanted to end up in somebody's dinner table.

Peter's brother got married yesterday. I attended the wedding reception and I was almost late for the event since I had to take my parents to the office from the airport and give them a rundown of how I ran the business when they were away. I got to the place and I felt I was the last guest who arrived, I wished patrick and his wife well on their wedding and went into the dinning hall. I hate the kind of crowds that come in social events so I ended up sitting in the farthest table in the corner of the hall, where the airconditioner and the speakers were just right behind me. The food was great but I avoided any poultry dishes, since it might just be my feathered friend who got crushed on the road earlier.

Peter has a very high tolerance for alcohol, he's been serving whiskey to guests while taking some shots with them every so often. I dont drink that kind of stuff, my system cant handle alcohol that strong. But when Peter came to that farthest table where I sat, I ended up taking a shot of whiskey with him as a tribute to his brother's wedding, then his father came whom I took another shot with, then another shot with his cousin from Ohio, and another shot with his cousin from Cebu. Then Philipp came, whom I still took another shot for missing his engagement ceremonies weeks ago, and all the while I was also drinking this whiskey coke I came up myself.

Later, I began to feel my circulatory system go ballistic, my heartbeat was pumping like mad, as if I had a slow cardiac arrest in progress. So much for whiskey, I drank about three bottles of water then settled for three bottles of beer. I left past midnight and I walked home, I needed some fresh midnight air anyway.