Tales of the EX.
I
I was on my third paracetamol this morning. Just an extreme headache I contracted sometime Sunday afternoon while I was going home. I was supposed to start on the layout of the blog and maybe format some songs on the pod, but I just had to go and tuck myself in at around 8pm. Which is rather early, when every Sunday I usually stay up late up until the house ghosts start the knocking.
It kind of made me feel uneasy though having to sleep on the same bed I always sprawled myself on usually on mornings and not recognize anything about it. At least my family didn’t do anything drastic upon my leaving to move to a temporary abode, unlike Ger’s whose family was too eager to have her move out of the house that everytime she comes home, the need to go back to Alabang is aparent. My mum is still sweet enough to change my sheets, or fix it just in case I come home and I would need a place to crash. My bed now also doubles as a dreamland refuge for my eldest brother whenever he comes home. But when I laid my back on my bed, I didn’t find the same welcome I used to get. Maybe the JC dog didn’t pee too much on the territory or something. I just couldn’t smell ME on the sheets. It doesn’t hug me as much anymore. Led me to wondering if my room has this hurt about me leaving them for another.
This is probably what my brother felt when he went off to get married. Even if it was his home for more than 10 years, it just doesn’t feel too “home” anymore. It’s just a good thing my mum’s there. She the only one who makes things feel like home, even if when I’m around I do get her own weekly rants that she needed to unload. So every Monday when I go back to Alabang, I bring her emotional baggage. *sighs*
But it’s the small things that lead me home. Last night, while the headache consumed me, my mum lay beside me and rubbed my back with this menthol thing that’s supposed to recondition your body. Then she just stayed there, hugging me, giving me warmth.
At least, her smell is around. That’s one thing I look forward to when coming home.
II
I received his text on my way to Alabang. Obviously forwarded, something about how if two lovers separate and remain friends, it’s either they’re still in love or they never loved each other at all. I told him the caring doesn’t stop after the breaking of hearts started.
Somehow, there’s always going to be a tender spot for everyone who has made a mark on me, or me on them. I may not consider them on the same level I used to see them at, but hey, they’re still people I voluntarily look after no matter how much the communication is severed.
III
Last Saturday I was at Giligan’s Makati with Ger as two of her friends celebrated their birthdates. I honestly froze when I saw this girl who looked just like Aiz, a good friend some years back. We had some problems over the years that prompted us to severe communication ties with each other.
I didn’t want to do an episode like two years ago when I had a manic hyper-neuro attack in Ortigas upon learning she’s in the same building I was staying then. I calmly took a deep breath, then looked at the girl again. Mere resemblance was all. Good.
But it was deafening, the realization that things come to reactions such as these. She was also a good person I didn’t want to lose, but it had to come to that. You wonder why things happen, but mostly, you wonder whether you’ve learned enough not to have an unwanted de ja vu.
Have I really learned? I don’t know.
Yet Another Copycat Syndrome
It’s not going up to my collection, but it’s worth a slot in the news:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060915/ap_on_re_us/school_bombs
What other ironic similarities do they have? They’re a duo, they’re Goths, and they’re very distressed teenagers. Yet another formula for a famed Columbine attack. It’s very curious to point though how the police and media are very keen to point out on a lot of outside details. How they’re supposedly into rpg hate stimulants, how they’re goth, how they were so into the Columbine news. Like the news said, they needed just another bad day, there could have been another carnage. And everyone would think, no, it could never happen here. 
What they ALWAYS forget to analyze is, how the pains of being a teenager in the United States high school halls can suffocate you to the point of destruction. They have never tapped into the inside minds of how these kids CAN get too abusive, and I’m not even talking about these Goths that they are labeling wrongly. True: emo songs may get you depressed; a little rpgs may urge you to get mad. But the things that can push you to the edge that makes you really want to pick up a gun and kill, never minding your own future nor the pain of having to inflict that, lies on the pressure this little microcosm can push you. Let me tell you how they work from an outsider’s point of view: the American society is brainwashed with the idea of being too protective that even the kids have created their own comfort zones to be able to move around—they have the jocks, the princesses, the cheerleaders, the brainiacs, the punks, the rockers, the emos, the geeks, the rpg players, the goth, and possibly, even the extremists. If you fit into something you would most likely have to stick into that something to create a field of comfort: hey, I’m in my cliqué, and it’s going to protect me. Jocks are never powerful alone, and so are the worst rebels. They always work as a group.
So when you’re in a rather country-type state which has very limited ideas of branding, and you don’t fit into anything, oh, you still get a label: you’re labeled a nobody. You’re the person who falls into the margin of those who were taunted, screamed at, and at the worst instances, being bullied. They can start claiming that it’s just for school colors, but they never understand how bullying can get so bad. It’s the powerful versus the more powerful, it’s the cream of the crop versus those who are deliberately unwanted. And if you’re in the sidelines and was looking for a category, you’d most likely immerse yourself into something rather outside the options. That’s where copycats come in. And that’s where the media loves involving itself in. Sometime in April 1999, in a small town of Littleton, Colorado, parents of the upper middle class society were happily bidding their kids goodbye for school. These were privileged kids, they drive to school, and possibly have not experienced hunger in their life. The grounds which served as their home for about 8 hours per day, Columbine High School, waited on them with pride: the sign in the hallways noted “The finest kids in America pass through these halls.” (Time Magazine, Mar 1999)
What happened sometime before lunch haunted each parent and student not just in Littleton, but in the whole world as well: charmer Eric Harris and introverted Dylan Klebold, walked into the school with sawed off guns and homemade bombs, in the end killing a little less than 20 people including a teacher. The whole world was a witness to that as much as it was almost like a 9/11 attack: evil conquered that day, and it’s in the very halls of a building forming the new generations of Americans. Nobody fully knew what the reason behind the attack was. And they thought, no, it could never happen here. Shortly after that, small attempts of carnage were either successfully pulled off or arrested beforehand. People then installed scanning machines which required every student to undergo a body search, while taunts and threats were treated with severe disciplinary actions. Kids after that 1999 shooting have this aim of either pulling off a Columbine, or surpassing Columbine. They realized how powerful the minds of these kids can be. And power it was: people in the margins found their heroes, and powerful ones too. Soon, they had a group—they’re the ones who are amazingly angry at everybody, and if they don’t get what they want after being taunted, they would kill. It was a simple answer to a very complex situation. It was an obvious display of newfound leadership that Klebold and Harris also felt: “Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.” (By Dave Cullen, The Depressive and the Psychopath. http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/)
It’s such a sad state. And when this culture comes to the unknowing, it’s such a huge shock. Lyndon Gregorio, of the famed comic strip series Beerkada, was someone far from the idea of being bullied. While I was doing internship for a production company which houses some primetime shows in a local channel, Gregorio happened to be on the same set and was able to tell me how he underwent the horror of going to a prestigious primary school which is affiliated as well with a rich Chinese-dominated school in Manila. “You don’t know how it’s like to be bullied,” Gregorio tells me. It was an amazing night for production filming and I was accompanying him in Baywalk as the guest’s assistant. “You realize after you’ve grown that it’s just so wrong for a primary school kid to think about wanting to kill himself because of the taunts.” They were the rich and they knew it, Gregorio says. The kids did the roughest things to the young Gregorio, who then, even with the talent, was considered an outcast for being fortunate enough to have a scholarship from the school. The word fortunate, apparently, was not the most applicable term.
And this, is only in the Philippines, where kids are known to be benign compared to Americans. If Gregorio happened to be deeply hurt and had immediate access to guns, he would have killed himself. But it could have been worse. If he saw the shooting in 1999 (which happened fortunately after his high school years), he could have gotten an idea and probably planned something like that too. Just because of an affinity. And then you can almost imagine the media going crazy over that as well. He’s probably psychopathic, they’d probably say. But they would never attribute it to a bad society, nor a lost affinity. And then, there would also be a string of copycats in the Philippines. And then they’d also think: oh no. it could never happen here. But maybe it will.
oh, good lord. This happened to be Ger’s favorite! >:))
Gawd, such a great attachment to the “Is it in you” catch phrase. Ger, yet another advertising conspiracy. 
Oh, and JP, you’d love this. And I’m sure not just because you’re gay. I mean, a gay appreciator of all things sports. (keeeeeedddiiiiing! Walang mapipikon. )
I have been going through my list of links since this midnight. I don’t have much to do when we’re not required to listen from where I’m sitting, so there HAS to be a preoccupation. I’m still wondering whether I should be doing bits of the other parts of the website so at least I can just upload as soon as I get home. But I didn’t feel like writing so much.
Come to think of it, all the days after I last had an urge to go around alone, I refused to write my thoughts. I go about them topic after topic, but they just refuse to cooperate when I face the keyboard. Upon going through a lot of blogs, be it that the writers were people I know or plain strangers, I realized that I missed a lot of things, but mostly, I missed being with myself. See, they were hectic but did not have any problems connecting to the inner self. They were harrassed but could still voice their opinions. They had to live, but they could still write their own musings. They matter, and they knew it. Their musings matter, and the world had to know it.
The whole idea of having either a blog–or maybe a website for some lucky ones–in the cyberspace, is the convenience of bringing a piece of you everywhere there’s a computer; at the same time, sharing a piece of you to everybody anywere there’s a computer. Tina conducted a survey then of the reason for onlline journals. Is it the pride of displaying work? Is it creating a fan-base to glorify yourself everytime you get a thousand or so hits? Is it the pacification of selfish reasons and egotism? Maybe so, depending on the average hits per day you have. But mostly? It’s an establishment of self in the cyberspace using your craft to create a shrine for your thoughts, using either talents in pictures or compilation of words as medium. Be it you get famous or you’re hiding that blog somewhere else, you’re writing. And thoughts come from the best part of everything: yourself.
So you must have been to you, before you market yourself. You connect and think at 120 words per minute, trying to assess a simple question which crossed your mind while riding the MRT. You can’t hold the thought, you write about it. You remember this elated feeling after you kissed your crush. You write about it. You intertwine the best words with your best logic and come up with a so so write up, but you don’t care. You express your thoughts. You express you.
So it can be an outright disappointment for me if I look at my recent posts and wonder why they have become indistinguishable from a twelve-year-olds cry across the internet. I talk about the most useless information I can come up with; I talk with a detached view about opportunities; I make the world seem a little less exciting than it used to be. I don’t talk anymore about long walks. Nor haggling in Quiapo and emerging victorious even after realizing you could have gotten it for far much less somewhere else had you walked around. I don’t have stories about how I felt the pain while walking in a district housing eyes who are bereft of trust on them. I don’t have anything about tasteless food but sold by sunshiney tinderas. I don’t have long hours spent in a coffee shop just drinking coffee and reading a book recommended by a good friend.
I miss all these. I haven’t been to them. I haven’t experienced them. Which is probably why I don’t have much to write. Maybe because I can only write about impersonal things. Maybe because I haven’t been to myself for such a long time.
And that can just be the saddest mystery no one would ever be able to solve.
In Memoriam.
People in the office are suddenly starting to get into this weird craze of uplifting the program’s spirits. Paano kasi, those bastards became too lax and disappointing that suddenly there was this huge attrition scare that took almost 10-20% of the work force. All the other programs tried getting the buzz, but no real reason was found. Hell, we’re in the same program but nobody really found out what the main reason was. Up until recently when everybody patched up things together.
After the inevitable move of our waves to the Member Services Department to follow the older waves after leaving the Pharmacy Services where everbody started from, there was this sudden influx of again, batches of waves from the former department to the new department. For orientation, Pharmacy Services handles calls from 
Pharmacists and techs from all around the US territories, while Member Services handles the angst of all americans, educated and rude, who are under the insurance policy of Medco. That, according to statistics, would be the estimated 55 Million americans who are in dire need of their medicines. Obviously, you see the weight of the job there. When we used to only guide Pharmacists how to process the insurance under their systems, Member services asks us to help process the callers’ requests for mail in medication, for replacements for lost meds, information on their plan, limitations of their coverage, explanations of reasons, transfers to our own pharmacists when they have questions, transfers to supervisors when need be. Sounds tacky? Not quite. The tension comes in when they insinuate that we’re trying to extort money from them, because they are the direct consumers, and they have to pay for their medications even if they don’t want to. So when they do something they didn’t know was not covered by their plan, or there was a bad charge to their credit card, or they have to be charged again for the wrong medications, they forget that Medco, like all things around us, meant business, and in as much as we wanted to help them, we can’t do everything. Because Medco would then kill us if they go bankrupt.
Obviously, these consumers do not realize those sometimes.
So they scream at the phone.
Above right: The TLs of MEDCO both Pharmacy Services and Member Services in a kenkoy effort. Above: The wave two agents. Some of them misquoted.
When people got transferred over even if they didn’t want to, the department suddenly had a hard time hitting the required handle time which is supposedly around less thatn 4 minutes or so. Some of us try hard, and most people try harder, but soon, an ultimatum came which gave a bad jolt to agents on the third floor, right wing: meet the requirements or you’d get terminated.
So obviously, they’d rather just pack up and leave.
It was so easy. Scare people then they just go and leave. Who the hell is the management trying to scare? They’re not offering the best incentives, and agents always feel harrassed. Bakit hindi aalis?
Oo nga naman. Bakit hindi.
So, with this “ingenious” plan of uplifting the spirits, they’re suddenly printing banners displaying either the management, or the distinguished agents. Well, no, not really. But they started printing the faces (pangit posters, not to mention) of the older two waves who have been around for two years. Like, “They’re happy, they’re not leaving, maybe so should you.” Then they printed the faces of the Team Leaders on a separate banner, parading them like they’re happy and fulfilled. Sabi ni Ger parang in memory of.
Keyword is like.
Of course, your resident blogger and her significant other have also been thinking about leaving. Why not? Or maybe transfer to a different account. And maybe we should. But while planning that, we’re also deliberating on why we must.
Dahil hindi nila kami inaalagaan?
HAPPY @ MEDCO: Are you still happy?
There are some people around who have exceeded the expectations of the management and yet they’re still not doing anything to give them the things they need. Incentives na lang, nilalagyan pa ng tax. Or kinakaltasan. Nakakapikon tuloy.
So while looking at the posters this Tuesday, I thought, why not do a poster displaying the sides of the abused people and tell the management what they need to know? Maybe by then they’d know their faults.
Except of course, that’s a stupid idea. So I’ll let it start with me. 
O, di ba?
