// Quarter Life Monologues

Before anything else, Mom, I know you regularly lurk in all my blogs.. please, don’t judge my friend by the stuff he writes. He likes making things up, and making fun of himself, and he’s actually just using his blog to cover up all his insecurities. He needs all the friends he can get, Mom, I hope you understand. Love, Riz.

So yeah, I don’t usually involve myself in popularity contests like this, but I’m doing this out of the abundance of my heart, for one of the smartest bastards I’ve ever met in my professional career. Not that Mikey needs more votes, as it seems now, he’s got a bunch of people rooting for him already. And not like Mikey needs more recognition and fame, after all, he is THE rising internet star.

But I’m still making my vote count, because I know there’s more to Mikey than his egoistic, non-sensical, and perverted blog. He’s actually a good friend, someone you can trust, *ehem* once in a while. Even though he owes me a lot of money from all those Mcdo and Wendys deliveries that he thinks I forgot already. And even though he steals stuff from my desk, like my ipod connector or my tissue roll, when I’m not looking. I know he does it just for fun, because he doesn’t need my stuff, nor borrow money from me or anyone because he’s rich, as evidenced by his payslips lying around the managers’ area, bearing all the money he gets paid for for plurking and surfing youtube at work the whole day.

So yeah, I vote for Mikey. :)

And no, I won’t tell how much his monthly income is. (Then again, shoot me an email and I will probably consider sending you a scanned copy of his payslip, in exchange for Sonja’s cupcakes. Or Krispy Kreme.)

List of sponsors after the hump. I mean, jump.

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Someone in Pinoy Dream Academy sang this song last night, and while I wasn’t really paying attention who the singer was, I was simply drawn to the message of the song.

If I could get another chance
Another walk, another dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
How I’d love, love, love to dance with my father again

Googling the few lines I remembered, I found out that the song was “Dance with My Father Again” by a certain Tamyra Gray. Clicked Limewire. Searched. Downloaded. In a few minutes I had the song looped in iTunes.

It probably goes without saying that there was a lot of tears involved while this was happening. Being alone in the condo/apartment which I just recently moved in to (will blog more about this in a bit), it was easier to just cry that time (than hold back), get it over and done with, and be ready to smile again for when my Mom and kuya picked me up.

Father’s Day has passed again. I didn’t anticipate that I would be sentimental about it, but just like last year, there was this inevitable longing to have someone to hug and say, “Happy Father’s Day, Daddy, I love you” to. The traditional Father’s Day tribute at church had once again made me hide my swollen eyes under my sunglasses.

There’s not a day that I don’t miss Daddy, and there are moments, such as celebrating Father’s Day, and hearing songs such as “Dance with my Father Again”, when the pain of (physically) losing him just tugs deep into my heart again. And I’m little by little learning to accept that this is how it’s going to be the rest of my life.

(Following Liz’s lead, however late.) Here’s for you, Dad. :)

Also, my one wish, encapsulated in the few lines of this song: “If I could steal one final glance, One final step, one final dance with him, I’d play a song that would never, ever end, How I’d love, love, love to dance with my father again..”

Dance with my Father Again sung by Tamyra Gray

I should have just let it go unannounced, eh? After all, most of you probably know me for my infamous disappearing acts. Hehe. Don’t worry, I’m alive and well, I’m happy (never been happier), and I’m not about to commit suicide (or anything like that). I’ve just been pretty busy with a lot of things lately I sometimes wish there’s more to a day than 24 hours.

And I’m not about to put in writing the details of my absurdly demanding schedule. This post is intended simply to redirect you to where the action is. I haven’t completely disappeared from the blogosphere, as a matter of fact I’ve been blogging a lot here, there, and everywhere. And you can also find me playing with images, and documenting my life in pixels, just click away and you’ll see.

Meanwhile, Guitarchic.net is taking a pseudo-break, until.. I say so. :P BRB.

*Gracias to A Softer World for the words on the above image.

My first week as a 24 year old passed by in a breeze, leaving me with a lot of things to be thankful for, and knowing that inspite of missing my Dad more than ever, there’s no better way I could have celebrated my birthday. After all, you only get to turn 24 once. Then again, fine, whatever number you put in that sentence still applies anyway. Hehe.

Last year, when I turned 23, I remember blogging about some of the reasons why I was glad I was turning 23. Now, I feel as if there’s a big leap somewhere between years 23 and 24. Suddenly, you feel old. Titos and Titas would come up to you and say, “I got married that age!” College people from church would ask you how old you are and when you tell them you’re 24, they would stare blankly at you, pause for a few moments, and say, “uhm, hindi nga Ate?”. So yeah people. I’m 24! Bring it on!

At first glance, there’s really not much of a difference — I’m still the same Riz, with the same surname (lol), and the same height, and the same God holding my life together. Still the same daddy’s girl who loves hugging people (fine, not ALL people), whose wardrobe’s 60% pink, who dreams of going to Oz, and of a happily ever after.

But looking deeper, I know that I’m a very different person from how I was a year ago. For one, I’m one year away from turning 25 (que horror!), and a whole year of drama was added to my life — defining moments, new set of people, new job (which is not so new anymore), new opportunities, bigger responsibilities. Twentyfour years made me this, and I’m glad. :) I just hope that when people look at my life now, they’d appreciate what they see — “some bruises here and there”, but still going, still thriving, still trying (and hoping) to make a difference one day at a time.

On a lighter note, a few interesting things happened this week: I had (1) an intimate birthday celebration at Fontana; (2) a lot of sweet surprises when I came back to work, day after my birthday; (3) a date with an agnostic (whose identity I shall keep anonymous as requested hehe); (4) a pseudo-date with my highschool best friend; (5) a get-together with three of my most favorite people in college, Jam, Drew, & Iking; (6) pizza party (photos to follow) with my most favorite people in the world (I know, I’m soo full of superlatives lately); (7) a new guitar (!!!) I named “Jar”, which I got as a birthday gift *swoon* and..

(7) Tadaaah! A new addition to my growing list of cyber estates. ;)

So to wrap up my week-long birthday bonanza, I invite you to hop to CLICK HAPPY, my pseudo-photoblog (not really photojournalistic but simply a space to store photos that speak a thousand words, or something like that), partly inspired by Liz’s Whats and Woots, but mostly my way of freezing memories when I’m not in the mood to be wordy. ;)

So go go go. And know more about those sweet surprises, and Jar, there. ;)

This morning, I was welcomed to my virtual office (read: my Gmail Inbox) by 10 Multiply invitations waiting to be approved. As I accepted one invitation after the other, I couldn’t help but smile at the weird “relationships” that these people are tagging me.

• Jeffrey Zamora has invited you to be his sister. (When he’s my high school best friend. Sister?? No way. :P)
• Andrew Aleta has invited you to be his second cousin. (When he’s my college friend/orgmate.)
• Nikos Sanchez has invited you to be his distant relative. (When he’s my brother.)
• Gino Carteciano has invited you to be his online buddy. (When he’s my online stalker, not buddy. LOL. Peace baddie!)
• Josiah’s Catering has invited you to be his business partner. (Uhh, okay.)
• MyKid’s World has invited you to be her business partner. (Acceptable.)
• Noemi Dado has invited you to be her friend. (Finally. Something that actually matched! Then again, it’s the safest network connection other than “online buddy”.)
  
• Chel Quitoriano has invited you to be her sorority sister. (When she’s a Twitter friend, and the wife of a blogger friend.)

And well, 2 out of the 10 invites, I declined, so I won’t mention them anymore. Heehee.

Looking at my multiply connections, I realized that I currently have 4 sorority sisters, 3 life partners, 2 fiances, 1 fraternity brother, 1 mother, 1 boyfriend, 1 neighbor, 1 distant relative (in the form of my brother) and 1 ex-husband.

Multiply is funny that way. With their limited network relationship options, you have no choice but to tag your enemy your “Friend” (then again, why would you add your enemy to your network? hehe), or your friend’s friend your “Online Buddy”, or your roommate your “Neighbor”, or your friend’s mother your “Mother”.

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