Singular Delusion

I have to give credit to Jericho's post on being single for inspiring me to write this entry.

So here's my take on being single.

For some reason, I recently had similar discussions with many of my gay friends. I wonder why it come up almost constantly as a topic of conversation and I've presented my argument over and over again these past months that I might as well post it here.

Also, it has happened not more than once that when I go MSNing or YMing with my friends in Las Islas Filipinas (you know who you are, bitches), they would pretty much automatically ask me how my "love life" is.

Is it expected that we always have to have a "love life" that they even skip the question if I'm even dating, let alone if I want to be in a relationship at all?

When people know that I've been single for the past five years, I'm often asked if it is by choice or circumstance. I wish I have a more simple answer to that question but it has never been about just one reason.

Sometimes it's exclusively a choice or exclusively because of circumstance, or a combination of both, with one reason stronger than the other. And even that changes over time and I often find my self constantly swinging from one direction to another.

Does that sound a bit complicated? Well, because it truly is.

It would take me days to explain my thoughts on relationships (asus, emote di ba?), but by and large I would classify into the following categories the reasons why I'm not in a relationship right now:

1) Mobility. Most of the time I honestly don't have an idea where I'd find my self within the next two years. And you know what they say, always travel light. With all my shoes, coats, hats, couture gowns, AND toiletries, do you think I still have enough space for a man in my luggage?

2) Priority. Simply, I have better and more immediate things to do. Like, I don't know, knitting, gardening, photo shoots, charity balls, etc. Come to think of it, if I really want a relationship, I would have worked on it with single-mindedness a long time ago. But obviously, I don't want it that bad enough.

3) Lack of suitable men. Am I alone on this impression that the men we have around are just appallingly not trust-worthy? As decent human beings, how difficult is it to be sincere, committed, honest, and genuine? Am I reaching for the stars here? I don't think so. And no, dahling, don't get me started on the men in BangCock.

4) Fear of rejection and pain. Now we all have this, no? But mine is stronger than most people, it seems. I wish I were more daring to jump into a relationship fairly easily but knowing really well what an emotional queen I am, I choose to protect my self from, well... my self! Somebody give me courage. I can handle dry skin very well but definitely not a broken heart. You have no idea.

5) Not so positive view on relationships. I always, always ask my self if these relationships are ever worth it. It is clear that these are not forever, so what is the point exactly of starting one at all? To have at least good memories with someone? Rolls eyes. Because you learn your lessons and you emerge a better person after a relationship? Yeah right.

(At this point, the bayot realizes that this post is long-ish already, which is a real challenge to my lazy, lazy ass.)

So there, that's basically the top five reasons. And looking at it now, I appear selfish, no? But aren't we all?

Anyway, where do I stand right now given these factors? It's basically a confluence of the five but in most of my conversations with my friends, it appears that my fear of rejection and pain is more prominent for now.

Negative self-talk is also taking its toll. Call it pessimism but I think it is just being realistic and pragmatic.

But no, I've not closed my doors to possibilities. Absolutely not. I know I have so much love to give (asus!!!) and with all objectivity, I'm fairly easy to tolerate (ask my mom), but really, just show me a person worth werqing for and let's talk business.

For the mean time, I'm very much happy baking sugar-free cookies.

Weekend Report: Paparazzi Shots Edition

I was first inspired by Bryanboy to take paparazzi shots , that's no secret. Aside from my infamous (chozzzz... infamous kung infamous) jumping shots, inspired by Caroline Trentini and Racquel Zimmerman, I never miss to take my OBLIGATORY paparazzi shots whenever I travel.

Gosh, I do have a big collection of them. And lately even if Bubbles and I just walk around the city, we do take time to have a paparazzi shot or two... dozens. We cannot have enough of them, no?

Anyway, so the weekend was spent on one paparazzi shot after another. I even managed to convert my friends into paparazzi-dom. How gay can we all be, aber?

Friday evening was spent in the our neighborhood with Maggie Cheung and Ermitanyo (shoutout to you, bitches!). After a scrumptious dinner of grilled pork we stumbled into a big movie screen set-up outside the nearby market.

Farther into the end of our soi, a large crowd of people were gawking at a female singer and her retinue of scantily-dressed back-up dancers.

This delighted the male spectators, mostly drunk, to dance at the foot of the stage, practically worshiping them girls who would give the Sexbomb Dancers a run for their money.

It was nice to bump into our friends in our own little community. The familiar faces included the coffee lady, the girl from where often have dinner, or the girl from the somtam (papaya salad) shop. Oh, we even saw the masseuse gyrating with a few drunken men.

The party, if I can call it as such, certainly had a nice neighborhood feel to it.

On our way back to the building, we ventured into the market where we saw men hauling and mauling animal carcasses. I hardly see the night-time activity in the market and despite the gruesome scene, it was nonetheless fascinating.

Saturday afternoon, Noemie Lenoir and I went to see some galleries in Silom Galleria. I've long wanted to explore that part of Silom since, I don't know, forever. And I couldn't be more pleased that I had few hours with Noemie Lenoir.

Gosh, he makes my ovaries make sommersaults! Basta, no guy in recent history has got me this excited. Hahahaha. Yikes, here we go again! Oh, please someone stop me from my delusions. (The bayot pouts.)

Anyway, the point is... we had a nice afternoon stepping into one gallery after another, talking about art, and so on. We also dropped by Kathmandu Gallery, which used to be a shop house and had been converted into a quaint photo gallery.

Kathmandu Gallery is close to BangCock's most prominent Hindu temple and on the other side of the street is a mosque.

After Neomie Lenoir and I parted, I met Bubbles in Silom where he inhaled a plate of fried chicken at KFC. Well, I also had dinner at McDonald's so I'm equally guilty. But at least the paparazzis did not catch me eating at McDo ha.

We then took the bus to Khao San Road where we met up with Maggie Cheung for some cocktails at our favorite Burmese bartender.

Of course a night of drinking had to end with noodle soup and lugaw, chai mai? Until finally, we took a tuk-tuk back to our little soi along the river.

Now, to cap this post, why don't we dance to current gay icon Lady Gaga's Paparazzi?

Digging the Past

I have a habit of keeping cinema and park tickets just for the sake of it. Some people collect stamps or shoes, I collect a different kind of mementos.

Sometimes I have to purge my wallet of half a dozen cinema tickets that were wedged between IDs or my ATM card. There are times when I find tickets between pages of books or even inside the pockets of my jeans.

A month ago I found one batch of tickets inside a small bag that I carry with me when I travel. I hardly use that pouch so it has become a convenient keep-all for the tickets I find in odd places.

I was in the bus when I discovered the clump of papers. Gosh, it was walking down memory lane galore tuloy in the oddest of places.

I found a ticket to a monument in Vietnam from around a year ago. There was also a ticket to Sukhothai when I visited the site with Heidi in October (was it?). I also found a stub of the ticket to the Marble Temple when a high school friend visited me in January in 2008.

The cinema tickets were a story on its own. Most of them were from movies I watched alone, some dating to exactly a year ago (like Atonement and There Will be Blood).

Meanwhile, there are tickets that I watched with some men that I have sort of "dated"... please take note of sort of and the quotation marks.

I did not even want to see many of these movies, even if I had to be threatened at gun-point for instance. But just for the sake of being with the person who made me kilig at that I time, I dragged my skinny ass to the theater.

Ewwww... cringe-worthy memories with these men ha. I wasn't ready to revisit all these, I swear, least of all while in a freaking bus in the middle of one of Bangkok's congested avenues.

So while riding the bus with its airconditioner blasting on my already parched face and remembering the bastards who have come in and out of my life (choooozzzzz!!!!), I rolled my eyes and pouted.

These facial contortions were punctuated with a giggle that made the bitch sitting beside me to look my way.

Oh, and the tickets? I kept them of course.

Together with the other tickets I've amassed in my stay here in Thailand so far, they are now safely pressed in the pages of the massive The Complete Encyclopedia of Archaeology, a book that I would probably not open in a million years.

Weekend Report: Watak-watak Edition

The weekend report starts on Thursday evening when I was invited to Heidi's place for pizza. With us were his wife Hye Kim Park and our office's intern from Macau, Maggie Cheung.

Maggie Cheung and I took the early evening boat to Saphan Thaksin and from there it was her first ride on the BKK's skytrain. Too bad it was only for one station.

The four us then found ourselves on the pool deck of Heidi's building, and pizza easily transitioned to vodka. Hye Kim Park can certainly make a mean cocktail using some flower tea.

Friday evening I met Yvonne for a movie date. Yvonne is the widow of my colleague/friend who died last month. She used to regularly watch movies with her husband and I thought it would be nice for her to have some movie buddy in me.

We decided to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which turned out to be such a disappointment.

She and I had late dinner after the film. Dinner took a rather sad tone when we started talking about her husband and so I could not help my self from bawling. As in major hagulhol itez. Tears fell on my chicken noodles and the people in the restaurant stared at us perplexed.

Feeling weighed down by how the evening turned out with Yvonne, I called Bubbles and we met at McDonald's in Silom. He noticed how swollen my eyes were but thank god I was wearing water-proof mascara that evening. Anyway, Bubbles and I eventually ended up in Silom Soi 2. Zzzzzzzz...

Valentine's Day. I made reservations at a river-side restaurant close to my building. I had three dates for the night, namely Bubbles, Maggie Cheung, and my Singaporean colleague, Ermitanyo. (Maggie Cheung, Ermitanyo, and I all live in the office building.)

We had a table at the roof deck of the restaurant aptly called In Love. It was lovely to watch the sun slowly slipping down the horizon, framed by the Rama VIII bridge. Definitely romantic if not for the fact that we are all single.

From my area we decided to head off to Silom, stopping by for coffee and then some cocktails in Silom Soi 4. Maggie Cheung and Ermitanyo (who, I have to note, is straight) were keen on visiting a gay club. The original plan was Lang Suan, but Bubbles reckoned Maggie Cheung and Ermitanyo would appreciate the drag show in Soi 2.

We thus found ourselves jostling with the crowd at Soi 2, which was surprisingly sparse for Valentine's day. I wonder where the rest of BangCock's baklas were.

Wink, Wink

The UK edition of popular hip magazine i-D is coming out with twelve covers for their March 2009 issue and pays tribute to some of the top British models.

The models include the current crop of top Brit models Agyness Deyn, Lily Donaldson, and Jourdan Dunn.

The so-called veterans also get their mileage with the likes of legendary supermodels Stella Tennant, Kate Moss, and of course the divine Naomi Campbell.

Oh, did I also mention that the bestest, super-duper model extraordinaire EVAR also has his own i-D cover?

* Edit *

The cover above was re-worked to perfection by Fuchsiaboy of Khmerlandia to replace the cover I posted yesterday, which was my despicable attempt at Photoshop.

Thanks a lot, bitch.

* Edit *

Well, well, well... look do we have here?

Sky is the langit?

It's not my problem anymore, it's your problem anymore?

Let's burn the bridge when we get there?

I'm sweatening?

Of course... Been there, been that!

Check Fuchsiaboy's version of the i-D cover.

Oh Lara!

Now who landed her 15,000th cover on French Vogue, March 2009?

Carine, ma cheri, you really know how to show your adoration for our dear Lara here, don't you? You dedicate an entire issue to her with editorials by famed photographers Nan Goldin, Steven Klein, Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and Hedi Slimane.

I'm having an orgasm right now.

Merci Carine for keeping us maricones inspired.

And Lara, Lara... you and I should have coffee one day, dahling. The world knows that we are bound to be best friends.

Below are from Peter Lindbergh for an eight-page editorial called "Lara a la Mer".

And these are by Hedi Slimane in an editorial titled "Lara by Night".

Must-watch: Doubt

Fucking unbelievable.

Meryl Streep will win Best Actress... I bet my clitoris AND ovaries on it.

Now excuse me while I watch it again.

Must-watch: The Reader

Finally. I've been waiting for so long to watch the film, and I reckoned it would still take weeks before they show it in BKK cinemas. On the way to Soi 4 last Sunday, my only choice was to snag a pirated DVD copy instead (Torrents, which was the other alternative, is freaking complicated for me... can somebody puhlease enlighten me on how it works exactly?).

As I mentioned in this post, I have read the novel three times already, so I could not help having some expectations from the film adaptation. Now, we all know that rarely do films capture entirely a book; like exactly how many times have we been disappointed? I would however take exception on a few adaptations, with Atonement and The End of the Affair at the top of my head right now.

All right, I know I should be judging the movie on its own merits without really comparing it with the book. But I cannot help it, I love the book way too much it seems.

That being said, the film adaptation is not a complete disappointment. It was not an outright betrayal I should say, but it could have been better. At least three key episodes of the book were not included in the movie and that still baffles me. These episodes could have added more layers to the movie, and in fact could have explained better the motivations of the characters, e.g. why did Hanna leave the town all of a sudden just when she was promoted in her job?

And yes, I also could not help comparing Kate Winslet's acting in The Reader and Revolutionary Road. Hmmm... I don't get it why she was not nominated for latter instead, or at least in both films. But really, she excelled way, way more in Revolutionary Road.

I'm currently halfway with Doubt, and in as much as I'm a huge Meryl Streep fan, I really, really want Kate to win an Oscar (for crying out loud, Mother Meryl has two of them already!) coz Kate is no doubt one of the best actresses around. With her nomination for The Reader instead of Revolutionary Road, I'm afraid that Meryl has the advantage, as I see it.

Now to bring it further, I'm still puzzled why The Reader is even nominated for Best Picture in the Oscars. The story-telling is nothing ground-breaking. It does not offer anything fresh. The novel has the potential to be gut-wrenching and provocative but the movie is such an average adaption. It does not have any chance to be a classic, which Best Picture nominees should be at least.

Final verdict: while the movie is engaging in some parts, it is easily forgettable as a whole.

Must-watch: Revolutionary Road

Oh. My. God. This is one superb movie that gave me goosebumps. Watched it with Bubbles, Heidi, and Hye Kim Park last night.

Revolutionary Road is a glimpse into the life of a young couple in typical American suburbia in the mid-50s. It is about how much the family is willing to give up in order to realize their dreams. It is about challenging and breaking free from the trappings of the concept of a "normal" family.

The acting by Kate Winslet is astonishing. The costumes were resplendent. And the cinematography is top-notch. Gosh, gosh, gosh... I have to stop my self from effusing about my love for the movie.

Check this trailer instead (which uses Nina Simone's Wild is the Wind, one of my most favorite songs).

Processing: The Pursuit of Happyness Edition

Agent San Francisco: ikaw, how are you? kumusta ang bkk?

Agent BangCock: i'm ok... i realized last night that i'm happy and satisfied with my life... surprising coz i've always been restless

Agent BangCock: last night it just dawned on me that i'm feeling serenely happy OR happily serene these past months

Agent San Francisco: winner naman ang realisation na yan

Agent BangCock: i know! hahahaha. weird nga. i don’t know where it came from

Agent San Francisco: ang basic question pa e, how did you end up in the mode of thinking?... as in u asked yourself?

Agent BangCock: wala lang... i was looking at the painting on my wall and the thought just came into my head... "hmmm... i'm actually happy and contented after years of restlessness". yun lang

Agent San Francisco: ay kaloka. when will i have that moment kaya?

Agent BangCock: baka it would dawn on you in SFO

Agent BangCock: or maybe coz you don’t think of happiness... you don’t even have to will it... it just happens.

Agent BangCock: you need to be calm for once to listen to your self, i guess

Agent San Francisco: maybe maybe maybe

It just happened on its own.

For the first time in years I'm free of the need to have something to look forward to.

For the first time in years I wholly appreciate the present and can truly be content with it.

Perhaps it has something to do with feeling settled in BangCock, of the certainty that I don't need to be any where else right now.

Perhaps it has something to do with the comfort of having really genuine friends in the city... and beyond (Star Trek isdatchyu?).

Perhaps it has something to do with the balance that I've achieved in many aspects of my life and that makes me feel more whole.

Oh, it might even be just hormones.

Driving Around Khao Sam Roi Yot

Heidi and I took an old, rickety bus to Sam Roi Yot from Hua Hin, the ride taking about an hour or so. We stopped in a town along the highway and found out that we missed the appropriate junction.

Motorcycles had to bring us to Sam Roi Yot beach, 40 kilometers from where we got down from the bus. It was a scary ride on the highway; I was sure that a truck would run over us any second.

I relaxed a bit only when we made it to the smaller, less crowded road where things became scenic as the tall cliffs of Khao Sam Roi Yot became more visible.

Khao Sam Roi Yot literally means "Mountain Three Hundred Peaks" and is located in the province of Prachuap Kiri Khan. The national park is famed mainly for its limestone cliffs as well as its pine-shaded beaches, marshlands, caves, mangrove forests, and fishing villages.

We chose Sam Roi Yot for the weekend trip not only because it is close to BangCock but also because it is not yet crowded by tourists.

Our guest house (Blue Beach Resort, 0-9225-1908, highly recommended) is close to the beach. Such a great bargain and the owners were very helpful.

The sand is grayish and the water is shallow. A few meters into the sea we saw a couple of rocky islets whose main residents, we heard, are monkeys.

As the national park is too big to be explored on foot, Heidi and I decided to hire motorbikes. Now, I haven't driven a motorbike before, I was of course scared out of my wits. Heidi was encouraging though so I said might as well try it for once and stop acting like a wimp.

Fortunately we got the "automatic" kind (I don't know if there is any other kind). I just had to push a button and it started and then I used my naturally limp wrist to control the accelerator. I swear it was easy as using a hair dryer, even operating a microwave oven is more complicated.

After a tentative start, I eventually got the hang of it but I was reminded how dangerous it is to drive on a small highway when I saw this sign.

Our first destination was the Khao Daeng (it probably means Red Mountain) view point. The route was scenic, mainly tall karst cliffs with shrimp farms at their base. With the sun setting fast, we were totally surrounded by the silhouettes of those majestic cliffs.

Monkeys greeted us at the base of the view point. The well-marked trek was about three hundred meters and we clambered over huge boulders and sharp rocks. It was not as easy as strutting down the the catwalk, my dear. Several times I felt my heart was about to pop out of my chest.

The view from the peak of the cliff was worth the climb at least. The light was beautiful as the sun slowly slipped behind the mountains. From the top we saw a small fishing village close to a mangrove forest as well as beaches and more shrimp farms.

We also made a short stop at the village on our way back to the guest house.

The beach was quiet in the evening, we hardly had any thing to do but read. Besides, I had a sick tummy (thanks perhaps to the sea food in Hua Hin) and I felt very, very weak.

On account of the sick tummy, we had to cancel the kayak ride to the island the next morning.

Instead, we again rented motorbikes and drove to Tham Phraya Nakhon a huge cave with an opening at the ceiling under which stands a pavilion constructed during King Rama V's visit to the cave in 1890.

But no, bitches, I did not see the cave. I was freaking weak to climb it so Heidi had to do it alone and I was left at the restaurant, sleeping my ass off. Sigh.

The two gorgeous photos below are courtesy of Heidi.

Driving farther, we dropped by the Sam Roi Yot Visitor's Center where we shortly checked the mangrove forest (or was that rather a plantation, Heidi?).

Shortly after two in the afternoon, we headed back to the guest house, took a shower, packed our bags, and hopped on a car that brought us to Pranburi where we took a van back to BangCock, the ride taking over three hours.

Heidi, thanks for werqing Hua Hin and Sam Roi Yot with me. Truly, I'm proud of your progress in camwhoring, I'm seriously threatened now.