IS CONTINUING TO THINK ALOUD OVER AT http://thejonastory.wordpress.com/

among the list of requirements if we are to be married by a pastor of a particular church is for alvin and i to attend a four-part marriage preparation seminar. as i am not much of a fan of organized religion, particularly of its more non-feminist interpretations of the bible, i approached each instalment with caution. 

weeks before the first of the seminars even began, i started to psyche myself to not turn red and have palpitations the moment i am admonished to submit to my husband-to-be, as i was sure i will inevitably be told to do. i was so successful in my mental preparation, in fact, that i actually enjoyed most of the seminar instalments. 

most of the topics tackled had to do with practicality and truth be told, made a lot of sense. the guest couple’s story of the wife steadfastly refusing to find work even when her husband, whose role in the family was supposed to be the provider and protector, was jobless and their family didn’t know where their next meal was coming from because she was determined to fulfill the role that god had given her as her husband’s helpmate and supporter was an exception. 

i think the moral of the story was supposed to be ‘have faith that god will always provide’ because they *did* turn out fine when the husband finally had the sense to start looking for work. I say the lesson should have been use your god-given brain sooner and stop sitting on your ass hoping some miracle would happen and your children would miraculously be fed. 

some eyebrow-raising claims aside, i was internally congratulating myself by the third session for not having had yelling matches with anybody yet. sure enough, the universe rewarded my smugness with a hard smack. 

what i failed to prepare for, and really i blame no one but myself – i should’ve foreseen this!, was the topic of, drumroll please, virginity. 

tonight was the last of the seminars and i was so sure i was home free. sure, it’s been mentioned that the last topic was intimacy and sex. sure, it’s part of the thin ring-bound booklet/syllabus/handout they gave. but for the life of me, i naively didn’t connect it with virginity at all. 

and so i turned red. and i palpitated. and i had to do everything in my power to not engage the speaker in a yelling match. 

this was what the church wanted me to learn tonight: i should not have sex with a man until i somehow get him to marry me first because if i do, then there is nothing more that he will want from me and he will leave. 

no, i do not have a brain. no, i do not have a personality. no, i apparently do not have anything else worthwhile to contribute to society and the world other than my fucking hymen which, when torn out-of-wedlock, will render me completely worthless. (until i turn to the lord on my knees and beg for forgiveness, i presume) 

is it insane that i believe that marriage is a lot, lot, LOT more than if i have sex before or after my wedding day? that WHEN i choose to have sex with my boyfriend or fiancé or husband does NOT determine the kind of marriage I will have? that the only person who has the right to choose the when and the who as far as my sex life is concerned is ME and as long as i’m not hurting anybody, nobody has any right to judge me for it? 

that as far as i’m concerned, the main foundation of a good marriage are the two people who are in it? if they are both mature and respect each other, it should not matter if they are virgins or not. 

organized religion, stop making people feel guilty for something they shouldn’t feel guilty about. life is hard enough without additional hang-ups. 

and while i’m at it, i also do not, DO NOT, appreciate you lumping ‘homosexuality’ in your list of ‘sins.’ ignorance, honey, is a graver sin.

i tease you about some random thing and you roll your eyes and contort your face into a half-grimace, half-scowl, holding the expression for a few seconds. then we both laugh and you jokingly wonder aloud what i ever saw in you.

friends and neighbors, i am very happy to report progress! 

no, we haven't done much (and when i say much i mean 'nothing at all') since my last wedding post roughly four months ago, and most days i'm fine with that, after all, we're not aiming for an elaborate affair and neither alvin nor i have fairy tale wedding dreams we desperately want to live out.

but there are days when i wonder if i should be pouring more of my life and soul (as well as wallet and pocket contents) towards planning my wedding day. it *is* theoretically the only wedding day i will ever have (and still the only *first* one, in any case. knock on wood).

i wonder if i will regret not making more of a fuss, not insisting on a designer dress that will take months to make and at least two fittings to finalize, not longing for a high-karat white gold band studded with sparklies.

it's not that i do not want these things. wait, scratch that, it *is* because i do not want these things.

i don't want to have my picture taken while standing in a bathrobe next to a headless mannequin wearing a big, shiny wedding gown and i don't want a face so made-up i don't recognize myself and i don't want to enter a giant hotel ballroom filled with scalloped fabric welcomed by a sword parade.

i don't want to make cliche couple poses and i don't want a five tiered fondant wedding cake nor an ice sculpture and i don't want to make my guests eat salad with thousand island dressing.

i've discovered, however, that most wedding packages are made up of these things i want to stay clear of. while the ones i want, --simple, long wooden tables and chairs, a big, open area to set them up in, cake with real icing-- these are the ones that are hard to find.

and so i delay and delay and do nothing in the hopes that i will stumble upon the very, very small group of suppliers who will not look at me oddly when i say i prefer rtw wedding dresses and an unmade-up face on my wedding day and no bunched up shiny cloth on the buffet table.

i sniffed the air, trying to place the oddly familiar smell. tea, i finally realized, the air smelled of tea, jasmine tea specifically.

it was the night i arrived in singapore and i was crossing the pasir ris park with cai, on our way to her and ces' friend's --and soon to be theirs as well-- hdb flat. hdb, for those not in the know, stands for housing and development board, and an hdb flat is singapore's version of our very own bliss housing. (and yes, they use the term 'flat' there.)

singapore is probably best known for its aversion to gum. so much so, rumor has it, that to be caught chewing it meant getting fined --at the very least. that, and how clean it supposedly is, to the point that it has been said that the country has lost its soul.

granted its gum-less and soulless state, the place certainly smelled fragrant.

over the following days that i would spend walking and walking and walking in and out and around their mrt stations, my nose would continue to be exposed to a variety of aromas.

four days after landing in manila, i have memories of odors wafting out of traditional herbal drugstores in chinatown, little stores filled with stacks of bolted textile at arab street, and mounds of unnameable spices crowding the sidewalk in little india.

of heady scents coming from pots of steaming noodles and dumplings, curried chicken and beef and mutton, and roti prata in numerous hawker stalls.

in most, if not all, of my pre-trip research, it has been written again and again that singapore isn't somewhere one deliberately plans a trip to, rather, it's a place you spend a couple of days in to kill time while en route to some other more exciting country.

i was warned of inevitable boredom after two days at the most, of arrogant singaporeans, of antiseptic overkill.

after four days of exploring its hot and humid streets, i found days not long enough to savor peppermint chocolate ice cream tucked inside huge rainbow-colored bread and to linger in charming bookstores with wine crates for shelves. i met friendly, gordon ramsay-crazy store staff and a chef who generously gave me fresh scones with clotted cream and conversation. i encountered drivers who did not mouth off and give me dirty looks while i, in true pinoy fashion, jaywalked singapore's clean streets.

the unthinkable has happened; i think the boring, soulless city actually has me slightly besotted.

i've been forcing my stagnant brain into action these past few weeks with numerous little projects, and while it usually takes a few minutes for it to sputter into life each time, the activity actually feels good. there are even some days when i don't feel as foggy as i routinely do, so yey!

little project number 1: i've been making bags! burlap bags to be exact. alvin, who smugly reminds me often that it was him who came up with this particular exercise, brought home empty coffee sacks for me to transform into chic, eco-friendly bags.

i spent days googling bag-making tutorials and giving myself sewing crash courses (when i say sewing crash courses i actually mean learning two or three basic stitch patterns) --pre-sewing, if you will. these pre-sewing days were so intense i actually *dreamt* about back-stitching burlap in various sizes and trying different ways to attach canvas lining.

i finished my fourth bag earlier today and so far has had good reviews on it and the other three, so yey again! thing is, since i know nothing about pattern-making and make each bag purely by feel with no set measurements, i'm not sure if i can make the same bag twice. but then again, that's handcrafted for you, hehe.

little project number 2: i'm trying to learn how to put on make-up! for my wedding day, you understand. yes, yes, i know. am i insane?! maybe. in the maze of twisted alleyways that is my mind though, learning to do my own make-up is a lot simpler and less energy-consuming than hunting down prospective make-up artist after prospective make-up artist only to discover at each *paid* trial session that his/her idea of barely-there make-up is pancake foundation.

it eases my mind to know that i would be fully in control of what gets layered onto my face, and jing found me this really, really make-up-dummy-friendly tutorial on youtube, which made me feel less idiotic about my decision.

i figure i'll give myself about eight months to master blending eyeshadow, and if in that amount of time i still can't do it, then i would still have time to panic-find a professional.

little project number 3: i'm convinced that i want bougainvillea as my bridal bouquet. not a tightly-wired, florally-arranged-into-a-ball version, but a loosely-tied bunch of different-colored varieties with stems of inconsistent lengths. the entire effect would be that the whole thing was randomly picked that same day.

this qualifies as a project because last i looked, they don't sell bougainvillea in flower shops. nor in those roadside plant stalls. the only places where i see it, as a matter of fact, are inside people's yards and at those islands in the middle of edsa.

so now i've been taking careful note of which accessible houses i see them at (and i'm talking various colors here), and badgering alvin to befriend the owners of said houses so we can ask to harvest their bougainvillea blooms when the time comes.

yes, i'm ruthless that way.

almost two months into the engagement and with a much realistic view of what planning a wedding actually entails, there's nothing i'd like more than to just dump the entire chore of it on alvin --or anybody willing to take on the thing, really. i'm not very picky.

venue, food, cutlery, flowers, clothes (with sub-categories of fabric, color, cut, etc.), sound system, host, giveaways, table centerpieces, music, rings, pastor, licenses. the list goes on and on and on.

i honestly don't understand how your wedding day can be that one day when you're supposedly most beautiful; given the endless list of details the bride would by then have coordinated, it would be logical to assume that come the day of the wedding, she would slowly creep down the aisle, gaunt and exhausted beyond belief. come to think of it, that's probably what the veil is for, to hide the giant eye bags and bad skin.

i've surfed for dress pegs and venue photos. i've skimmed through filipino and continental and fusion menus. i've furrowed my brows and dissected the minute differences between yellow gold and white gold and platinum. we've even done one spontaneous round of actual venue oculars and i tell you the whole damn thing is tiring. tiring!

people tell me i should start attending bridal fairs and i instantly picture a giant room full of frilly dresses and table settings and pushy account executives and my insides just sort of curl into themselves with distaste.

i know i'm supposed to be all giddy and excited about "the big day". i'm supposed to spend hours daydreaming about how i'll float down the aisle in my perfect, floaty dress on my way to my perfect married life. i'm supposed to devote my entire existence, kill whoever i have to and do whatever else it fucking takes (dammit!) to make sure my wedding day is perfect, but i just can't get up the enthusiasm for it.

i wonder if i can still persuade alvin to just elope.

7.30am. i wake up in a panic.

me: we need to go to church.
him: huh? why?
me: so i can audition pastors.
him: what?
me: i need to make sure the pastor at our wedding is a feminist. i'm not going to kneel there and agree to submit to my husband without a fight.
him: haha! okay, we'll go to church.

i love my fiance.

probably my first favorite movie was 'some kind of wonderful.'

i remember being in grade school when it was first shown in manila and immediately identifying with watts, the tomboyish character that mary stuart masterson played. not that i was much of a tomboy, nor because there was a male best friend i was in love with. more than anything, i guess it was the agony of unrequited love that got me, even before i experienced it for myself.

later on i would also fall in love with other john hughes (now) classics 'pretty in pink' and 'ferris bueller's day off,' and would discover numerous other great films by numerous other great writers and directors, but a little part of me would always be attached to watts and keith's love story.

only up until last night, i've never actually seen the film.

oh, i know the story by heart and i've played and replayed each imagined scene in my head during random times in my life, but i never knew if those scenes actually existed.

see, i don't come from cinema-going people; i can remember only one instance that i saw a movie on the big screen while growing up, some sharon cuneta movie whose title now escapes me. i recall, however, being terrified while walking into the darkened theater. probably why i can't call to mind a single scene or dialogue from it now.

it was in the papers, a short synopsis that was part of a press release, and i was an avid reader and so i saw. it told of a tomboy who was in love with her best friend who in turn fell in love with the most popular girl in school. typical sweet dreams fare but fresh to my grade school self.

i carefully clipped the write-up and kept it for years, coming back to it now and again during bouts of obsessive compulsive general cleaning, and each time i re-read it, somehow the storyline never comes across as stale.

i would feel the same frustration and helplessness that i imagined watts felt some twenty years ago and i would feel compelled to put the clipping back to keep.

i can't explain how i wasn't able to come across a copy of the film in the two decades that passed, after all, i did manage to catch 'pretty in pink' and 'ferris bueller' a few times on channel 9 somehow.

maybe my subconscious was afraid of replacing my imagination with reality. maybe my imagined movie *was* enough for me. or maybe because the first time i watch it, it was meant to be on the big screen.

i've been feeling like shit the past few weeks, so much so that i actually lost my appetite some days. *one beat to let that sink in* i know.

it's not something i can pin down on a particular event or person or situation. i just feel sad and loser-like in general, and i just finished my period so i can't even blame it on hormones.

i'd feel so api and then i'd realize that i'm being terribly ungrateful because hordes of other people have it worse than i do and then i'd feel guilty about feeling bad and *then* i'd realize over that realization that i still feel shitty anyway and feel even worse. it's an endless downward spiral, i tell you.

from where i am, everybody else's lives seem so much better than mine and i'd gladly exchange them for my own.

i need new people to talk to and new stories to listen to and new places to see.

i have been fraught with worries these past few weeks. worries that had me calculating and re-calculating and allotting and re-allotting life's resources, that had my brain turning crazy somersaults in an effort to come up with plan a's and plan b's and plan c's, that had my emotions bouncing up and down from optimism to panic to depression and back and round again.

you see, the previous months brought about situations which cannot be ignored or pushed aside for when i'm ready to face them at my convenience. the universe apparently deemed it time to force me to try on adulthood.

though one can argue that these events did not happen to me directly (and lest the universe thinks otherwise, let me stress that for this i am very, very, *very* thankful), the waves of their consequences and repercussions inevitably reached my shores and messed up my familiar sand patterns, leaving me wet and flopping around, desperately trying to restore order.

in my head i crave adventure and all those silly things life randomly throws at you for fun, but give me real life without plans and i come undone. i am hypocritical this way.

i have tried to let this pass, really i have. i'm very aware of my penchant for impulsiveness, you see, and so have slept on writing about this many, many nights.

april of last year niño asked me for a favor. he needed to book flights for a project and since online rates were cheaper and he didn't have a credit card, would it be okay if he used mine? he would immediately give me the money for it, of course, since the amount had been allotted into the project budget.

i met niño through arlie and have known him for a number of years and so didn't think twice about agreeing to it, especially since emil also vouched for him. the online tickets totaled more than twenty thousand pesos.

the due date came and went with no word from niño. i repeatedly texted and called him to no avail and i was left with no choice but to pay for it with my money -- either that or have a blemished credit history.

soon i learned that the only way i could get him to get back to me was if i left blatant messages on his facebook wall, and while i do not enjoy leaving ugly, insulting public messages on people's sites, so far, i have embarrassed him enough to pay me all but 4,500. trust me, each painful installment was like pulling teeth.

what makes me so mad about this whole thing is the fact that i had thought he was a friend whose word could be trusted. the universe knows that for some reason, i'm more prone to scam artists than your average person, but to be scammed by a friend?! that's the worst kind of insult.

alvin advised me to be the bigger person and not write this blog entry. jingy told me to just let karma take its course. but enough is enough. i have been the bigger person for more than a year, so much so that if i grow any bigger i would probably look like the michelin man.

last friday, after leaving me hanging with promises (again) for two weeks, i snapped and texted him: 'alam mo ganito na lang, hindi na kita sisingilin kasi sobra na kong nagmumukhang tanga. kung gusto mo ko bayaran, okay. kung ayaw mo, bahala ka na lang.'

he replied with something like; 'hindi naman ganon. may pera na, naipit lang yung oras.'

that was friday last week. it's friday again and still no word and no money. tell me, if you sincerely wanted to pay, is it so hard to find an hour from five whole days to go to the bank and deposit the money?

almost from the very beginning, whenever i would drag alvin to various social gatherings in my corner of the universe, i would receive compliments about how cute (and at times, how hot) my new boyfriend was. this happened so often that i even felt compelled to blog about it.

it tickled me that other people might be envious of my gorgeous trophy boyfriend, especially since i've never had one of those before. all too soon however, it became obviously apparent that all compliments went *his* way, and the endless shower of praises over his looks became a little bit annoying.

now once in an often while, we at citrus would beg family and friends to be free on-cam talents for various financially-challenged avps. while being made up during the shoot of one such video, i was telling the make-up artist how all on-cam talents for that video were either family members or friends of the production staff (yes, we citrus girls get to be on-cam talents too. *that's* how low-budget some projects are).

to prove my point, i pointed to alvin who was standing a few feet away and informed him, 'i even hauled my boyfriend out of bed this early to be in the video.' to that, the make-up artist promptly laughed. no, not a my-god-this-is-some-low-budget-video laugh, more like a ya-right-he's-your-boyfriend laugh.

later on, while we were getting ready to shoot the last set-up, he told me sheepishly (and i swear still a little incredulously), 'baldy really *is* your boyfriend, isn't he?' i wanted to pull his entire head of curly hair out.

last weekend, alvin and i attended the birthday/dedication party of a good friend's son, and this afternoon, i got a text message from that friend which *finally* put alvin in his place:

'kailangan ko lang talaga ipaalam sayo 'to. Our office secretary asked me kung friend ko daw ba yung MODEL na kasama nung kalbo. Sabi ko sino, wala akong model na friend. Sabi nya ninang pa nga daw. So, tiningnan namin ang mga pix sa camera. Biglang sabay turo kay JONALYN CHAM! Hahaha. Ikaw daw yung model. Pa-autograph nga!'

while driving home.

me: binny?

him: ya?

me: i want to be sexy.

him: you *are* sexy.

me: no! i'm fat!

him: *sighs

me: binny?

him: ya?

me: i want to be pretty.

him: you *are* pretty.

me: i want to be prettier!

him: *throws hands up in defeat

i am not the most patient of people under the best of circumstances, and lately, my already-thin patience is being stretched the thinnest it has ever been.

two people. two situations. one financial, the other emotional.

i'd like to just equally erase them both from my life, thank you very much.

i think it would be safe to bet that at least half of the people on this earth sleepwalk through their lives. most everybody has a daily routine that is broken only by the appearance of weekends and long holidays, and even these breaks eventually become routine.

if a person can step out of her life and assess it from the outside, reducing the length of it into one smooth line, the events she would be able to pinpoint that made enough of an impact to warrant jaggedness or a sudden sharp shift in the line would probably be few and far between.

events that force you to leave your comfy cocoon and look at things in sharp, sharp focus and be accountable for hard choices you cannot take back --which is good if it results in happy and not-so-good if it results in, well, not-so-happy.

i'm turning 32 this year and i can count two, maybe three.

i feel that i am in the midst of a new one though, and while a part of me is sad that a certain part of my life would be over, the whole of me does not fight the change.

our days at the boni apartment are numbered and i will be changing addresses soon. again. (three address changes in four years, is that about normal, you think?)

almost everyday for the past couple of weeks now, alvin and i have been slowly hauling my stuff over to the apartment he shares with the twins, where we -my things and i- will temporarily stay until i find better digs for us all.

so yes, i guess that means i will be a makati girl for a while.

because it's been almost a month since my 'housemate wanted' post and because i am me and thus prone to fits of panic (it doesn't help that in that time, all possible housemate leads i had went up in smoke!), alvin and i drove around the jp rizal area sunday afternoon looking for possible apartments/units/houses/warehouses i could move into in the -please lord, no, no, no- event that i couldn't find someone by the end of the month.

first of all, i didn't know there were diagrams and diagrams of side streets that branch out from jp rizal. second of all, it seems that a lot of houses have rooms to spare, given the abundance of 'wanted bedspacer' signs tacked on front gates we drove by.

we stopped at a few apartment-for-rents, was told that certain units have been rented out already, advised to call the numbers printed on a tarp before coming by again, and looked in on a couple of actual spaces.

the first one we peeked into was the second to the last unit of a four-door apartment. it had wooden floors, a bathroom at the foot of the stairs and 2 big bedrooms with built-in closets on the second floor. there was also a door that opens to a fairly big open area where one could, presumably, hang wet laundry and/or hold barbecue parties in.

it was a place i could fall in love with. only it costs 15 thousand a month. gulp.

then we stopped at a low rise condo building along zapote and was given a tour of the available units. the first one we were led to was about the size of my kitchen/living room and costs 9,900 a month.

it was the second unit that was the winner though, i had barely walked past the doorway before i was immediately met with a wall. yes, it was *that* small. i remember thinking, my bed isn't gonna fit in here! the asking price for this particular gem is 7,400 a month. ahem.

i really don't know how they manage to show these units to prospective tenants with a straight face. if it were me, i would be apologizing profusely for asking people to live like rats in such cramped spaces.

the bottom line though, is that i still need a housemate and/or a fairly decent place to move into come end of the month. sigh.