entry no. 13

Saturday-27

Published: 2020, June 27

Every time I've revisited this Tiny Little Houses song in the recent past, I've always ended up rereading this comment:

"It sucks to know that you once knew someone and were able to talk to them about everything and anything and just in a matter of a few days, a few months, a year, you guys are total strangers left with each other’s secrets. You can only look at them in the halls, give them a sly smile and hope for the best." - Iman Sara

And I'm always like, "damn" and I clutch my heart or something, lmao. It just hits right home.

So, how's everyone doing? I've been penpaling a bit lately (slight understatement there).

- chigu

entry no. 12

He was persecuted for his beliefs

Published: 2020, June 14

I'm writing this on behalf of my poor friend funko who, in spite of his flaws, is a model class president. Kudos to him for standing up for what he believes is right even in the face of prejudice from his peers. His is a kind of tragic hero story, complete with friends turned naysayers, an intrigue arc of hysteria and paranoia, and a drawn-out, months-long scene wherein he implodes on himself. I guess, basing off recent events, now begins his redemption arc or something like that. We'll still have to see.

I think funko's saga begins in early October 2019, when funko decides to complain to his school about his class - which is the whole second year Occupational Therapy (OT) division of his school - being required to attend an intramurals activity as spectators the weekend right before midterm exams are held, his reasoning being that the timing of the activity was terrible and that students should be given time to instead be at home studying for the upcoming exams. I realize that I'm writing to an international audience (so weird saying this about a diary) so lemme explain what intramurals are real quick: they're a kind of annual school-sponsored series of competitive events involving sports, dancing, and whatever, mostly for recreation and, ideally, unattached to the whole academics part of school. I think funko and I still weren't on speaking terms during the time his troubles started, due to a very much regrettable string of events that mostly involved kikay (who happens to be funko's classmate in OT) and I which lasted a better part of a year, but I believe that it was desperation that drove funko to be the one to initiate contact with me again and ask me for help later on.

I digress; let's stay on track. Going back, funko raised the issue with his classmates and advised them to boycott the intramurals activity, with their best interests in mind. Somehow, funko's classmates were vehemently opposed to funko taking issue with the compulsory nature of the activity and much more so to the idea of him bringing it up with school admin. So fiercely opposed in fact that the class coalesced and went against him, so to speak. Why do you have to complain, you'll get us all in trouble if you complain, just let it be, were the (in my opinion, baseless) cries of his classmates. Nevertheless, funko did bring it up with the school. Without going into deeper detail, one thing led to another: funko had to deal with clash after clash, and he'd find himself crying in bathroom stalls, being ridiculed in public, and having his sad heart broken by the girl he liked/s, who happens to be his biggest opponent in class (I believe he still unconsciously cries her name). It's spectacular how it blew up by that much, but it did. By the end of 2019, funko had effectively become some form of pariah and was on the verge of being dropped from school for his failing grades (directly affected by his mental state). Worse, none of his or his class's problems had practically been resolved.

The root cause of funko's problems, I believe, is his class's attitude of, what I like to call, "partial activism". That is, being able to tweet justifiably damning statements about the current government administration over the internet yet being scared witless to even just as much have a word with a teacher about worrisome test schedules after class. That you platform for change in one place yet refuse to budge from your comfort zone of status quo in another says a little something about your reliability. You might as well had just been caught up in some "activism trend" going around on Twitter if your online values don't mirror your real life's. Ugh. What bothers me most about funko's class's case is their accompanying denial of victimhood just to keep the peace. We're not suffering, it's too early to complain, or college is meant to teach you about hardships, are the kind of actual things they've said; I think it's absolutely terrible to be that submissive. Speak out in the face of perceived injustice! Don't get me wrong, I may be a quiet person by nature but I raise my voice when it is needed to be heard or when I want it to be, and, in hindsight, I'm sure as hell glad to be in the company of Political Science students, as they tend to be more outspoken than the average.

As for why I think now may be funko's redemption arc, I mentioned a bit of what he's been doing in my last entry. He's sent the "ATTACK-AND-DETHORNE-GOD" letter, albeit under a different doc title. What's different about this new situation from the one from before is the scope and more pressing nature of the current complaint (which I will elaborate some other time) and that he's got the backing of a majority of the school's other class presidents this time around. I'll maybe talk more about this case when things are really underway.

☁

Picking up my new glasses tomorrow, hopefully. These frames are what I chose (pictured is one of the co-founders of Sunnies Studios herself).

Yesterday was my first quarantine mall experience and it was... strange, but nothing too unexpected. I only learned when I got to the glasses store that you had to make an appointment beforehand just to even step a foot in the store and browse through the products, so I made one for a few hours later. I went on to attend to other business I had with my mom at the mall and found that the mall barely had any people around or establishments open, which was a bit odd considering that the parking lots outside were sort of packed. Lines for some food or supplies establishments, especially for the supermarket, were pretty long though.

Didn't see anyone without a mask that day, save for a blind man walking with his cane by the side of the road on my way home.

- chigu

entry no. 11

My bed is a mattress on the floor; it's not a bed

Published: 2020, June 12

Just as I finally garnered the resolve to write more for this site, my internet connection went down for a few days.

Go figure.

☁

I spent the time offline shifting around on my floor mattress and getting back to reading The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. It's the sort of history book that's right up my alley - aka, not overwhelmingly Eurocentric (because everyone knows the story of Europe by now) - though I'd say I'm slightly disappointed so far with how the subject matter is handled: I can't say that the author has lived up to what I think he promised of deeply expounding on the nuanced, beautiful history of the Middle/Near East when he mishandles chronology and sums up whole realities in brief statements. Still, it's been a wonderfully insightful read so far on a region of the world that's barely covered by mainstream historical studies.

☁

My hopeless body clock got even more obliterated as I skipped sleep last night to revisit the game Rimworld - only because I couldn't log Steam achievements if I played my usual go-to game, Crusader Kings II, offline. I haven't played Rimworld since summer '18, and I've apparently forgotten how addictive it can get. You start the game in a "rimworld" with a character or a few, with some supplies or less, and try to survive and expand in wherever area in the world you decided to begin in. It's kind of like Kenshi, or a fusion of Terraria and Minecraft - though I can't say this for sure since I haven't seriously played the latter two. But you get the picture... probably.

☁

funko tells me about what's up lately with his school. Apparently, they're pushing through with the summer term despite COVID-19 still being in full swing. He sent me a copy of the letter of complaint he's writing to school admin. He titled the document "ATTACK-AND-DETHORNE-GOD" (he misspells a lot), referencing a dumb inside joke of ours. I think it'd be amazing if he keeps the doc title for school admin to try to make out. Frankly, I don't think students of medicine or of other related studies should be full-on 100% studying right now with online classes as the medium since their field of study mostly involves hands-on expertise, and they obviously can't access physical classrooms or spaces of learning at the moment.

By the way, here's the list of characters so far (people I've given proper aliases for):

1. kikay (she) = a friend of mine
2. funko (he) = another friend of mine

funko will clobber me if he finds out about the nickname I gave him.

☁

In other, sort of kind of unimportant news... I'm feeling a bit less frickin' lonely, lmfao. I'm only mentioning this because, as my mood had made a steep dip again today, I watched something that made me feel much better within moments. It may be a monumental challenge to try living up to the philosophy espoused in this video, but I believe it is absolute truth. We are born into this world alone, live through it alone (in spite of the connections we experience throughout our lifetime), and die alone. Our acceptance of our being alone may be a long-term process, but it's a journey we all should be willing to make. That "you are alone even with others" is a line I actually find comforting. Because it implies that everyone is in it together in their mutual loneliness. A person who fully realizes this probably won't be lonely and will be, therefore, happy.

- chigu

entry no. 10

Finally making up for lost time

Published: 2020, June 9

Yep, this is my third entry in a single day. Miraculous indeed.

I really do hope to write more for this diary. I think it'd be good for my mental-emotional health. I wanna be able to write lots of positive things too. Not that I want to censor out the crappy goings-on in my day-to-day (and I'm not going to if I don't have to), but I think it'd be nice to go back and read a filled diary with lots of things to smile at. So, I'll try to make life a bit better for myself to get this to happen. Quarantine time is a great time to get my stuff together and seriously push through with this journaling project once and for all.

Wish the best to anyone reading this!

- chigu

entry no. 9

When they come for me

Published: 2020, June 9

My friendship with someone just ended tonight. It's starting to really hurt already.

This isn't the first time that something like this has happened in this way. Last time a break happened with me, I was told that I just can't be understood or that I was on a completely different wavelength, all while the hurt I caused was obviously being downplayed when mentioned. I swore that I'd never make someone feel as bad as that again after that experience. Judging by the event of tonight however, I guess there's still so much I need to improve on.

I'm sure I have super low emotional intelligence. I mean, I love and care about my friends very, very deeply. But I just can't get that across to them. It hurts so much that I can't and that they always, always end up getting hurt when I try.

It always crashes and burns. And I'm always so helpless.

- chigu

entry no. 8

Thinking about investing in a walking stick

Published: 2020, June 9

I broke my glasses by accident a few days ago. They were on my mattress when I left for the bathroom without wearing them, for whatever reason. I'm functionally blind without glasses on. When I got back to my bedroom, I bent down to place myself on my mattress and absolutely squashed my glasses with my right knee by accident since I couldn't see clearly. That felt quite sucky because they were these pretty classy-looking aviator-type frames (something looking pretty close to this), but I laughed it off anyway just as I sometimes do to cope with embarrassment. So, I don't have glasses at the moment. I have an extra pair of glasses that I could wear - my previous pair - but there's something wrong with one of the lenses. I had realized that the optometrist for them gave me the wrong prescription because I'd always see weird with those glasses on even after weeks and months wearing them. I confirmed this theory only about a year after I got them, during an eye check for new glasses (the exact ones I recently broke) when the new optometrist announced that one of my eyes had improved significantly after she had looked at my old pair. My eyesight is beyond improvement so I just assumed that the previous optometrist had given me a much stronger lens than I needed. So anyway, yeah, not using the old pair. Can't buy a new pair either until the local branches of my favorite eyewear store open up from quarantine. Until then, I'll have to put my face super close to my laptop screen to see what I'm typing. The salt on this wound is that I have to use the touchpad for my laptop because my mouse too broke recently. I've never gotten used to dealing with touchpads.

Anyway, it was just yesterday that I realized that this little diary of mine is nearly two years old. Yet, it hasn't reached the 10-entry mark. Talk about procrastination! I had deleted a few irrelevant entries in the past though, so the total number of entries probably would've reached 10 if I'd kept them around. And speaking of entries, it looks like I never got to talking about what I was going on about in my last one (which was published about half a year ago already, might I add!). Maybe I'll make references to stuff I don't mention in related future entries since a fair lot tends to happen in life between the publishing of these diary entries.

But I'll try to write more. Like, shorter entries. Wondering if I should post my political essays here? Probably shouldn't.

And, uh, I removed that faux hentai ad from the footer. Don't know what I was thinking placing that there.

- chigu

entry no. 7

On standby

Published: 2019, December 29

I think I'm feeling fairly okay today. Definitely not as stupidly happy about some dumb little things as I was a few days ago but still alright.

I'm not in a writing mood at the moment but I feel like I'll be writing about a few things after those things happen soon.

For now, here's a pretty nice song. It's one of those songs that, for me, are attached to a specific memory or context. This song in particular was something I discovered during and remains reminiscent of a certain rosy situation I was willingly swallowed up in until the early weeks of this year.

- chigu

entry no. 6

In need of better lighting for a dim room

Published: 2019, December 12

I only realized that there was a problem after I was replied to with all-caps and exclamation marks in a group chat. Another project teammate then PM-ed me and told me to watch my words. Even then was I still clueless as to what I might have done.

People having concerns with me is probably something not alien to me and I feel that this happens over and over again mostly without my knowledge. It's just that this time I actually was (indirectly) informed, though informed not in the sense that I was told what wrong I did but informed in the sense that I was told I did something wrong.

Things like this make me want to deal with people less and less. Maybe this is why I'm legitimately fine with being on my own on most days. I feel like I'm always forced to cater to the emotional needs of people even when I'm not informed of the appropriate way how to. If this truly is the case, what is it holding back people from bringing up their concerns with me? I get it, I'm a dense person. But that's exactly why you should tell me when I do wrong. How am I supposed to improve when I'm left in the dark and clueless about my own mistakes? I want to improve! But when the answers I'm given are, "there are things btaw nga for u okay ra but di man ka mkbantay (there are things that you do that are fine by you but you just don't notice their implications)" and the like, I feel like I'm being detached more from the problem at hand. If I couldn't read the air when the problem was occuring, why do you expect me to be able to read between the lines now?

Yesterday night was the first time in quite a while but I felt like the irritation that I had had this sort of explosion which I felt throughout my body. My head heated up and my arms down to my legs tingled. Why don't people just voice their concerns straight to me instead of to someone uninvolved? Does it trouble them to bring up concerns involving me with me? It's hard for me to understand them, and I have zero patience for the mind games that complement their anger which, for me, seemingly come out of nowhere. Am I really not worth sharing to? Or are people scared of me? If so, why? And why don't people tell me? I ask questions that I'll get no answers to.

I'm completely done with people not being open with me when they have concerns with me. Maybe I simply just don't understand people, especially since this has been a recurring theme this year. 2019, a year of screwing up (a bunch of) interpersonal relationships. I don't really understand as to where some people have gone to but from now on I think I'll just start assuming that I had a hand to play in their disappearances.

I'm just... really tired of this. No, at this point, I realize it's not people I'm tired of. What I'm tired of is the helplessness of not being able to do something about the wrongs I apparently have and do. But again, I don't completely blame myself.

I'll finally be at my semestral break after I push through this week. May the break be long and the days fairly (positively) eventful.

- chigu

entry no. 5

To stork

Published: 2019, November 23

Someone left a message on my guestbook (the first one so far!) and it says:

"i think digital diaries are interesting in this age of insincerity and endless irony online, because diaries are a snapshot of the thoughts one has at that time, captured in a way that has no real regard for what appears 'cool' or not. in some ways, i think digital diaries can come across as a freer variation of the typical diary because hypertext is so flexible as a format, but also maybe because some things are less embarrassing to type rather than write down on paper. hmm, it seems this turned into something longer than i expected, but ultimately i believe you should keep at it with this digital diary!"

Hey stork, thanks for writing to me! Hmm, I dunno about me having "no real regard for what appears 'cool' or not" though since I do edit already published entries from time to time to change the wording or make what I've already written sound more appealing. Even when it comes to personal projects like this, I may end up being quite meticulous with how I word stuff since I always tend to "sound wrong" without revising things over and over again. But I get your point. Html is pretty cool and I really do wonder how sites like these went out of style. I guess it boils down to people prefering practicality and ease of use over personality, which is probably why we've all eventually drifted over to massive social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Inversely, it's shared sites like those that made me create this little space on the internet for me. It's a bit suffocating to be in a room packed with people, you know?

And thanks, I should try my best to update this diary. After all, I've already gone a literal year without doing so. Best of luck on your site too! I'd love to read more of your thoughts. Your "talkin' about" series is just my cup of tea. Looking forward to more updates!

On another note, by the way, I think Microsoft calls the program "Recycle Bin" because after the files you delete end up in there, you have a choice to either delete them permanently or "recycle" (restore) them. But good food for thought.

- chigu

entry no. 4

I still feel you in my chest

Published: 2019, November 23

Hey there, kikay. It's been quite a while. Around this time last year, I was feeling the most special things about you, and it still makes me stupidly glad now thinking that you had, for whatever reason, reciprocated the feeling. From you, I felt this new high which I had never experienced even once before. We don't feel this way from the thought of each other anymore, but I guess it's the memory of the experience that makes me long for that sort of feeling recreated. I've come to realize that I have difficulty feeling things so easily like that, so I guess you really were that special. But our time's already passed and, I suppose, gone for good, perhaps destined to be a footnote in our respective histories.

There's still one thing though that I fantasize about more frequently than I'd like to admit. At the NBS in Ayala, you're browsing a shelf for something. I'm looking for a book. And we find each other in the walking space between two bookshelves, our first time seeing each other in a very long time. We smile at each other, as if we've completely come to terms with our past. I say hi and you do too. I maybe jokingly pat you on the shoulder or ruffle your hair. We talk and laugh a bit for a short while. Then, if you're free, we head out and grab a milk tea from the Chatime inside the mall and catch up with each other's lives (Ayala's filled with milk tea shops, now that I think of it). Having finished our drinks and our conversation, we say our goodbyes and head back to our respective homes. And I'd be happy even if this would be the last time that we ever see each other. This make-believe scenario comes to mind every once in a while.

...And yep, narrating this came off as rather creepy. Jesus.

Anyway, that weird fantasy BS aside, I know that you're happier now than before. Please stay that way. I want to sneak a glance at that contagious smile of yours one last time. Or perhaps a few more times? For no real reason other than that I think your smiles are cute.

Alright, I'm gonna have to stop you right there, creep.

- chigu

entry no. 3

Goodbye youth, forever

Published: 2019, November 1

I haven't checked on this site in over a year. Never thought of updating this site since; I've forgotten about all this - about life on the net - for quite a while. But when good things in the real, material world end, I always get pulled back in, don't I?

I'll write about everything when I am able to.

Goodbye teenage years, and a belated happy birthday to myself.

- chigu

entry no. 2

Totally hadn't forgotten about this site in just under a week, haha

Published: 2018, July 29

Haha, alright. You got me. Here we go. The regular diary entry. Currently typing. Cheers.

So... what have I been doing in the past week?

Answer: Burning out my damn retinas, as I have been for the past month. Future self, let's hope you haven't taken a job that's full-on based around computers and/or staring at screens for ungodly amounts of time. Screw computers, man, and Microsoft Excel 1997 can go to hell (or software heaven, whichever is more suitable). My right eye... my right eye has developed some kind of problem that's not so doubtingly a direct effect to the work I'm doing. I think I've developed a variant of ptosis, or at least that's what the weighty droopy eyelid tells me. I'll seek professional medical help only if the condition gets progressively worse.

Regarding my current job, well, long story short, it was offered to me by my aunt after she got transferred to a higher administrative position at work (not sure if "promoted" was the case there) and the company didn't have the immediate manpower to fill in the void her former position at the time was left with. She thought it was a waste to pass the offer the company had given to her - that she may recruit a family member to take her place - so she gave me a call and briefed me about the job. Upon hearing about it, I hastily concluded that it was a priceless opportunity, spared no thought and accepted the job. In spite of the short notice, she told me to head on over for training right away that day. So I went over to her house and, as the company technically hadn't accepted me as an employee yet, I either freelanced a couple odd jobs in place of my aunt or trained for the job that I was gonna be going into. I think I forgot to mention that these jobs I'm talking about are online-based. Yes, they are, and the main job I took on is that of virtual assistance to an Australia-based traffic company. My initial days of training for the company were full of serious infodumping of job-related mechanics yet, fast forward today, I only ended up making several repairable mistakes, and a near thousand USD. Hoohee! (Though, I could've seriously brought up my salary by altering my payment schedules, but that's for another time.)

Holy hell, haha. This entry. This damned entry. You won't know it unless I told you... that I worked on half of that last paragraph today while the beginning of this entry until the former half of that paragraph was worked on last week, July 19 or 20. That's right: I procrastinated on this project yet again. Diggity darn. (I wrote this paragraph five days ago, July 24. It's July 29 as of this writing between the parentheses. This entry really is half a month's project, huh...)

Ah, which reminds me. The date marked between the title and the body of each entry doesn't signify the entry's creation date but rather it does its publishing date. In other words, I don't mark an entry with the date of when I first started writing on it but I do of when I finalized its drafting. However, you may see an entry with the date and "(ongoing draft)" marked beside it. Entries like those are that which are still being worked on. That'd mean that an entry could be present but not "published" at the same time; this would make the entry in question an "ongoing draft."

Well, this has turned out to be quite the disorganized entry. I had more in mind to add here but this already should be more than enough. This has been a long entry. Well, time to hit the sack.

- chigu

entry no. 1

Let there be light: and there was light

Published: 2018, July 11

I've had this idea of documenting my life in a diary for some time now. As a late but direct consequence of that idea, I "created" this website yesterday (July 10) to serve that purpose. "Created" (emphasis on the quotation marks), as the original index code was something I had borrowed/stolen from another Neocities site. All I've done was toy around with it, so there may still be some extra pointless code lying around here and there. This site looks quite different from the original, however, yet I have no idea how I got it site to look the current way it does. Kinda impressed at myself. I had originally intended to make the site look like one of those zany Geocities sites from the 1990s (see the style of Cameron's World) but I remembered how it sucks to have near-zero coding ability. I won't overstep my bounds.

Anyway, I usually don't push through or stay 100% serious with the (brilliant) ideas I come up with ever so often but I am thinking of working on my diligence this time around. I need a workout plan that'll eventually make me lose much of the procrastination that weighs down on me daily. Among countless other examples, my inability to communicate basic, coherent Japanese is a standing testament to how lazy and unfocused I can be, if one takes into consideration how long I've been trying to get into the language. To have this website work out ideally the way I intend it to, I have to put in a degree of effort worth an applause. At the same time however, I do not want to feel super obligated to this diary like I have been to my discontinued anime reviews-quotes page as I found that to be more counter-productive than anything in the long run (it was a memorable run though). I aim to improve my writing capability in this journey, as I have this ongoing major writing problem: it takes me an hour to a few weeks to write what could be written in 10 minutes. That's not an exaggeration.

You may notice an ad for a Chinese-sub hentai manga site at the bottom of my website. Well, it's fake. It used to be real, I suppose, but the url written on it shouldn't take you anywhere. It's a lost site from a generation or two prior. I wanna stylize my site a bit more in the near future by adding more of those now-faux hentai ads around my site like decorative streamers. I just think they've got a neat aesthetic to add, that's all.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I'll try to update regularly, may that mean every day or every other day or every week or every other week. We'll see.

- chigu