Hiatus

I haven’t been writing much lately, Im working on this resume for this new job I had my eyes on for weeks. I’m already short-listed for the job and the firm is asking me for a second resume because I hadn’t written much detail on the first one.

I hate making resumes, its like making one hell of a phony story out of your life and make yourself look good on paper, but even on paper I still look like a slop.

See you smokers in Hell

I was waiting for my flight back home in the airport, I had a hell lot of time to kill since I checked in early. I wanted to stay in manila for another night though since it was edgar’s birthday and he was asking me to join him and his girl for dinner at his place. Romel and his wife were also going to join them, romel is a college classmate and I owe him big time because I used to sleep at the floor of his pad in visayas avenue for a week when I had these late night classes in law school that would end at midnight, I haven’t met up with him since.

Anyway I was sitting at the pre departure lobby, I had a stick of cigarette in my pockets and the smoking room was almost empty and I decided to smoke it there. I wanted to go loosen up some nerves and think about getting myself a new job. I borrowed a pack of matches from the two Americans inside since I didn’t have anything to light my stick, then this horde of Koreans flocked into the smoking room, they were like 20 or something and each of them had name tags swinging on their necks probably in case they get lost or go up on a different plane, and each of them were so eager to smoke that they squeezed all their korean lungs into the room. The Korean in front of me also didn’t have any lights and he too asked for the matchbox, he lighted his stick and gave it back to the American and he yelled something so joyfully in Korean, he must have said that we were his brothers in nicotine or maybe that to see you smokers in hell when you’re dead, I bet the American didn’t figure out that one too.

I got out of the room smelling like an ashtray.

Fish Food

My kid sister has these two fishes for pets she bought for more than a week ago. These two fishes were supposed to be part of her school experiment, both fishes contributed and survived her grade school science and are now living inside a fishbowl in the middle of our dinner table. One of them had ivory white scales and its like those fishes you see in lake bottoms living off flotsam trash, the other is a black one with a bigger dorsal fin which made it look like some fancy fish til my sister told me she only got it for ten bucks.

I had an accident last thursday night that could have left both fishes dead. My parents were away so me and my brothers ate dinner at the time it pleased each of us, and I felt it was my third brother who ate last that night, he ate so late that even all the housekeepers in the house were already asleep from watching this late night local reality show and there was nobody left to take care of the leftovers at the dinner table. I took the trouble of cleaning the table, I still had the cable tv turned on and it featured some late night news about john robert’s appointment as US chief justice, I was carrying this plate of beef with vegetables to the kitchen when I overheard from the news about the news about who the next US chief justice will be where they started giving out a lot of familiar names. And during that moment of recollection I bumped the dish I was carrying to the brim of my sister’s fishbowl and beef, vegetable, cooking oil and everything fell inside the bowl, so much for abortion, I made a leftover soup with my sister’s fishbowl with her two live pet fishes inside. I would have either wanted to leave those two fishes on a midnight smorgasbord or find out if fish can live overnight in cooking oil, but chances are they’d be floating lifeless with the other ingredients the next day and my sister will be unreasonable enough to go crying to me for a more expensive replacement fish. I had a hard time catching both fishes, I dumped both to the drinking glass my brother also left at the dinner table while I wasted more time washing the fishbowl.

Both fishes lived to see the lights of the next day.