I'm depressed now and I'm not quite sure why that is. I suppose it's because many things are going on at the same time. None of these things is particularly terrible and while even my rational side keeps telling its irrational counterpart that there is nothing to worry about, it is this irrational counterpart that is winning out, like it always does.
So here's what has to be done over the next few days:
1. The front struts of my car are leaking and need to be replaced: $500
2. I need to order a glove compartment for the SL to be sent to Manila: $300
3. Some of the house is being painted: $1,900
4. Finding the source of my current depression: Priceless
That's why I'm so fucking depressed! Family funds, wherever they are coming from, are being reduced by $2,700--let's say $3,000 including unforseen expenditures--that's over P150,000! Sonofabitch! It's not like we're going poor, but shit, that is a lot of money!
It's been said before that whoever said that money couldn't buy happiness was a poor person. That's only half-right. Whoever said that was also an idiot. If I was wealthy I certainly wouldn't be depressed and I certainly wouldn't be worrying about three grand. Let's go visit Bill Gates in his $97M mansion by Lake Washington and see what a friggin' sad sack he is.
But that's not all of what's getting to me right now. There is also the matter of time to deal with, time as in the utter lack thereof. School begins on Wednesday. That's cool. Two days to do the following:
1. Fix up the kitchen - done Sunday night
2. Vacuum and shampoo living room carpet - Monday
3. Arrange all displaced furniture of living room - Monday, after carpet cleaning of course
4. Get struts fixed - Monday or Tuesday or Friday for 3 hours
5. Go to Mercedes dealer in Silver Spring to see about glove box - Monday, from 1 to 1.5 hours
To top it all of, I sent my academic advisor an email last thursday hoping to meet with him either the friday just passed or on Monday, which if he replies (he hasn't yet) yes to will mean I have to go to GW in DC and meet with him ASAP and that is NGTBGM (not going to be good, man). This is the first time I've ever hoped to be turned down by a professor.
It's not like I have to do all this on my own. I have help as far as getting the house in order is concerned, but with the daycare in the house we have to work around that too.
I know I'm making too much out of this and I seem to be the only one in the house worried about all this. I just dislike responsibility. I always do what I must, but I don't like doing it a lot of the time. When one grows up in an upper-class family in the Philippines, as I did, one doesn't need to do much. There were always people to do things for me, and things are never as expensive nor the rules ever as stirct as they are here in America. But here in the States, I'm far from upper class. The Peso is so weak and doesn't amount to much. The cost of things here may not be much for a Dollar-earner but is very prohibitive for those who earn in Philippine Pesos. I have to do things for myself now, and by myself, too. I like to think that I have so much more to do than the average well-to-do Filipino college student, who, it seems to me, barring any degenerate behavior, need not worry about much more than his grades. I've gotten used to it over the years, but I still get overwhelmed, and I still get depressed, that's all.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Monday, August 22, 2005
Now That's Love
My niece Sophie, who loves, among other things, swimming, turns two on Septmeber 23rd and has yet to be potty-trained. She'd just arrived from the community pool earlier today when she entered my room while I was singing the Go-Betweens' 1979 non-hit first single "Lee Remick" while accompanying myself on guitar. I was strumming my way to the end of the tune when she began to pee on my floor.
"Aaaay! Umiihi si Soph!"* I cried, ever the macho one.
After she finished, she was whisked away to the shower. I, on the other hand, was left to pat my carpet dry, pushing what added up to ten sheets of paper towels into the carpet with my fists.
The stranger thing about all this? I didn't mind doing it at all.
* "Aaaay! Soph is peeing!"
"Aaaay! Umiihi si Soph!"* I cried, ever the macho one.
After she finished, she was whisked away to the shower. I, on the other hand, was left to pat my carpet dry, pushing what added up to ten sheets of paper towels into the carpet with my fists.
The stranger thing about all this? I didn't mind doing it at all.
* "Aaaay! Soph is peeing!"
Friday, August 19, 2005
the back pages of ulysses
today i went to gwu to pay my tuition and get the info i need about my books so i can get them online cheaper. during this time i met manang fely (i think that is her name), a nice old pinay working in the scholarship department of gw whom i visit every semester, even though i don't need to. actually, i can't remember what it was that brought me to her office, but anyway now i have a friend of sorts outside the engineering department. we talked for a bit and then we said good-bye, that was it.
i also decided to stop by the tower records that is in a little shopping complex on-campus, just across the building we call the marvin center, the marvin center being the place that houses both the bookstore and the cafeteria. I decided to go to tower to see whether they had that new orange juice compilation ('the glasgow school') i scored in sydney a few weeks ago for a staggering au$32+. cd's are very expensive in australia so i was expecting to find out today that i'd paid way too much for 'the glasgow school.' my only faint hope was that there would not be any orange juice stuff here in the us, just as there hadn't been for the better part of two years that i'd been looking, this being the very reason i did not hesitate to buy the album in sydney. of course as my luck would have it they did have 'the glasgow school' at tower, and for us$13+. this means that if i had waited a scant two weeks, i would have saved meself, oh, about ten dollars. now, i consider this music priceless, so i still think the au$32 was not that bad a price, but what angers me about the situation here with tower is that they would not have this album--or at least at such a bargain price--if it were not released by current hot property franzfuckingferdinand's label (domino), nor would they have advertised it in the goddamn washington city paper. i did not let this little annoyance bother me enough to stop looking aroound, and as i was rummaging through the shelves i saw the subway sect singles anthology and one of the go kart mozart albums I'd planned to buy in sydney but just could not find there. so i grabbed them and promptly and remorsefully phoned my sister to tell her sadly that i was, for a moment, shamefully prodigal when i could not quite afford to be so. i also picked up a copy of the city paper on my way out.
i read that paper for the whole train ride to glenmont, and i read it also for the bus ride from glenmont to my suburb, olney. at the bus i was reading, of all things, the personals. i have written before about my interest in personals, not to look for a date but just the romanticism in the belief in finding love in so crass a manner. the particular kind of personal i like to read in the city paper is the 'i saw you' personal, where one person puts up an ad, hoping that the person he/she made brief eye contact with on the train, supermarket, etc, feels the same way about him/her and reads the city paper personals, particularly the 'i saw you' section. now, the funny part about all this is that in my rapture i did not notice the huge header reading 'personals,' plain for any passenger in my perimeter to see and reasonably conclude that i am a sad, lonely boy a-lookin' for love. so the bus got me to olney and i asked my aunt to drop me home where nothing really happened afterwards.
i did however, bake muffins for the kids in the daycare and they really liked it.
i also decided to stop by the tower records that is in a little shopping complex on-campus, just across the building we call the marvin center, the marvin center being the place that houses both the bookstore and the cafeteria. I decided to go to tower to see whether they had that new orange juice compilation ('the glasgow school') i scored in sydney a few weeks ago for a staggering au$32+. cd's are very expensive in australia so i was expecting to find out today that i'd paid way too much for 'the glasgow school.' my only faint hope was that there would not be any orange juice stuff here in the us, just as there hadn't been for the better part of two years that i'd been looking, this being the very reason i did not hesitate to buy the album in sydney. of course as my luck would have it they did have 'the glasgow school' at tower, and for us$13+. this means that if i had waited a scant two weeks, i would have saved meself, oh, about ten dollars. now, i consider this music priceless, so i still think the au$32 was not that bad a price, but what angers me about the situation here with tower is that they would not have this album--or at least at such a bargain price--if it were not released by current hot property franzfuckingferdinand's label (domino), nor would they have advertised it in the goddamn washington city paper. i did not let this little annoyance bother me enough to stop looking aroound, and as i was rummaging through the shelves i saw the subway sect singles anthology and one of the go kart mozart albums I'd planned to buy in sydney but just could not find there. so i grabbed them and promptly and remorsefully phoned my sister to tell her sadly that i was, for a moment, shamefully prodigal when i could not quite afford to be so. i also picked up a copy of the city paper on my way out.
i read that paper for the whole train ride to glenmont, and i read it also for the bus ride from glenmont to my suburb, olney. at the bus i was reading, of all things, the personals. i have written before about my interest in personals, not to look for a date but just the romanticism in the belief in finding love in so crass a manner. the particular kind of personal i like to read in the city paper is the 'i saw you' personal, where one person puts up an ad, hoping that the person he/she made brief eye contact with on the train, supermarket, etc, feels the same way about him/her and reads the city paper personals, particularly the 'i saw you' section. now, the funny part about all this is that in my rapture i did not notice the huge header reading 'personals,' plain for any passenger in my perimeter to see and reasonably conclude that i am a sad, lonely boy a-lookin' for love. so the bus got me to olney and i asked my aunt to drop me home where nothing really happened afterwards.
i did however, bake muffins for the kids in the daycare and they really liked it.
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