paralytic

© Joselito Briones

numb started friday before last. i was standing in front of the ATM machine and for the life of me i could't remember my PIN. it's not like it's new, i've been using it at least once a week for the past year. i tried to clear my mind and get the first 4 digits that i could think of. i came up with the PIN of my atm cash card in berlin. the people in the line behind me were already making their impatience known so i cancelled the transaction and walked away. i made up another 4 digits in my mind and thought about it over and over until i was convinced that it was the right combination. the next atm machine, 3 blocks from the one i was just in, said it was nothing more than made-up memory. as it was a friday night, there was no way to get a new PIN until the following monday. a whole weekend without cash.

or maybe the symptoms really started three months ago, when istockphoto decided to impose the royalty cut on the contributors' share. i was uploading photos at the exact moment of the announcement and i just stared at it in disbelief. motherfuckers! helplessness came after anger then the one question that never got answered no matter how many times i asked. "what now?"

on whichever date it started, the effect is simple enough. general feeling of helplessness, lying on my bed just thinking about the same things over and over. obsessing over injustices i have to put up with (mostly imaginary, of course) recurring inability to move my ass to do something productive - something else other than lying down thinking - anything else.

worst attack (thankfully also the shortest) was thursday night. a good friend whom i'm visiting overseas in the near future, sent me an email saying a mutual friend might also be there at the same time. someone i had (an ancient) personal history with. i was paralyzed with i don't know what. i was up all night  thinking about it. when morning came i read the email again before calling in sick at work.  turns out i misread the message and we weren't gonna be there at the same time after all.  i went to work without sleep.

XXX

some guys

© Joselito Briones

you know how sometimes you feel bad for not keeping in touch with people you used to hang out a lot with? john (photo, above) is one such person so when i learned that he's in hong kong visiting i invited him for dinner to catch up.  last time i saw him was twenty or so years ago, in mapua.  so he does mostly turnkey projects now and lots of golfing and diving and underwater photography and traveling and shopping.

so anyway we just walked around lan kwai fung and soho and non stop talk and had big ass yummy steak dinner in staunton street, then drinks in a bar in hollywood road.  don't you just love it when you see someone you haven't seen for a long time and it doesn't feel weird? fun night.

XXX

p.s.
i remember we had a small group back in the days and we had a song! lol i've forgotten how it goes exactly but supposedly each of us represented a "type" in the song : "some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the brain, some guys have all the pain, etc. etc." silly song.

coming to an airport near you

© Joselito Briones
spent the past week planning trips.  carmona for christmas (booked).  sydney (booked) and wellington (booked) during the chinese new year holiday.  san francisco in spring (was gonna be the baltics, but the schedule with the euro divas proved not too ideal), somewhere else in summer, then autumn in new york. and no, i don't have that much time off from work, i usually end up getting no-pay leave.

as for the maya thingy, it proved to be not too different from other 3d apps. it's more advanced, of course, and there's a lot more buttons to learn, buttons that spawn windows with lots more option buttons.  i still have half a month left of software trial but i'm sick of buttons already.  so no more maya for me, at least for the next few months, or until i get a new computer and i can download the software trial again.

hmn. what to do now?

XXX