Love in the Time of Cholera

I am just midway through it, yet I’m already chalking it up as one of my favorite novels.

Like the other Garcia-Marquez works I’ve read in the past, the first few chapters were quite a struggle to read. Nonetheless, if you have the patience to keep going despite the humdrum start, the emotional height and depth that this marvelous author would take you, especially in this novel, is truly worth it. It perfectly fits my sometimes excessive optimism and infallible faith in a “maybe someday” dream. 

I wish I were Fermina Daza and that Florentino Ariza and Juvenal Urbino exist in my world.

This book’s pretty hard to find, but try and get yourselves a copy!

Changes

You know what’s one good thing about getting older? You start to shed off your unfounded insecurities and begin to, little by little, become increasingly self-assured and take on a more confident “I am alive!” outlook. Somehow, the diffidence and anxiety that you had too much of when you were younger begin to seem pathetic. You understand more and more that everyday living is hard enough, and that the last thing you need are groundless, self-imposed baggage that will only weigh you down and keep you from seeing the bigger, possibly more rewarding, picture. 

I just realized that it’s actually more fun watching a life lived with almost-reckless abandon than a person who’s just way too keen on getting even the most indistinct creature’s nod. 

Believe me, I am not emancipated from insecurities. I think self-doubt is everyone’s bane, and no one, not even those who are seemingly “confident to a fault”, is spared. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try and be braver each day and bask in the knowledge that, however you wish for or dread it, not all eyes are on you.   

Goodbye, old drone…

Evita

The theme for last year’s company Christmas Party is Hollywood. We were divided into different groups, and the Creative Services department to which I belong was teamed up with the Foreign Group, the Executive Office, and the Purchasing and Accounting departments.

Needless to say, we weren’t exactly “the team to beat.” None of us were genuine performers—as opposed to the other groups. There were so many things going against us, one of which is language barrier (our Foreign Group is composed of Vietnamese, Burmese, Thai, and Indonesian members). The musical flick Evita was also assigned to us and, compared Grease or Phantom of the Opera, Moulin Rouge, or Chicago, it is easy to tag Evita as the most potentially boring presentation of all.

But what we lacked in performing skills, we made up for with, well, whatever individual skills and upper hand, no matter how minute, we had. We downloaded a bunch of songs from the Internet and put together a 7-minute version of Evita, complete with an Imelda Marcos-Evita Peron parallelism to spice things up (with, ahem, yours truly, playing the Imelda-turned-material-girl-Madonna farce)!

We hired a professional dance instructor to teach us the Tango. I was tasked to direct but I could never orchestrate a Tango dance like Irene did. With the Tango and the finale settled, it was easy to put the rest of the performance together. We practiced and practiced for an entire week until presentation day came.

All the teams did really great. Our Tango was not how we imagined it to be (Hahaha. Sorry guys, but it was a real major eyesore). Apart from that, everything played out smoothly. And, surprises, surprises, we actually landed third place! With the congratulatory greetings coming with remarks like, “Buti pa yung sa inyo, may storya!” Well, the story was one thing I really made certain would be clear because I knew it was one of our few saving graces. Great to know that it really worked!

It feels really great to just let loose from time to time, doesn’t it? See our performance pics below. So out of character! Hehehe. J