I'm really trying to convince myself to live more austerely and more frugally this year. So far, I have NOT bought anything from the New Year's Sales.
An artist, from the Banksy mold, has spray painted an image of Santa Claus ala Uncle Sam with the apt "..YOU curb your consumption" byline all over the city. Very brave. Very clever. I agree 100%.
I've done the traditional 'clean your room' bit to welcome the New Year and was flummoxed by the amount of useless crap I've accumulated. I'm embarrassed to admit that I've kept a couple of bizarre things that should have been thrown in the bin ages ago such as used flight tickets, cinema/gallery tickets, clothes I won't ever wear again, and even my last payslip from La Salle!!!!
I gathered all the other stuff that I didn't need but were usable (DVDs, Toys, CDs) and gave them away to my local Oxfam shop to be resold for charity. The only sore thumb in my room is my friend's balikbayan box which up to this day has not been collected by his woefully inefficient shipping company. Honestly, I think it just contains mostly junk (clothes, shoes) which does not justify the energy, environmental, and monetary cost to send it back to the Philippines.
I also discovered how much plastic I carry. Anything with a bar code that is expired or I don't really need, I cut to pieces and disposed (ie. Mastercard, PRC License, Store Cards, old IDs...etc.).
In fact, I could throw away most of the stuff in my room. All I really really really need to survive is a clean and untarnished reputation. This means, in case of a conflagration the first thing I will grab is my passport.
I don't need to keep my books, I just need a library card. I don't need to keep space consuming cds and dvds because I can rip them all to a small hard drive. etc...etc....
The lighter I am, the higher I can go.
I've made a mental list and came up with only two essential things that I will spend my money on this year - healthful food and travel.
Speaking of food, my mom called me up to describe in obscene detail how she cooked a large and juicy bass caught from the Ambuclao reservior in Benguet. I said, no way there is bass in Ambuclao! I thought that lake only had carp and tilapia. She also ranted about how it took her 30 minutes to traverse 2km of highway because that evil hobbit bitch cheating lying president Gloria Macapal Arroyo held up the entire road with her convoy! Arroyo spent New Year in my beloved city fouling up the place with her hot air and gas-guzzling caravan. I guess this is further indication of how reviled and hated she is. The Queen of England has only two motorcycle escorts, Prince Willem of Netherlands cycles to work each day, the Prime Minister of Sweden does groceries without bodyguards and here we have a pretender to the throne secured by an entire batallion just to go eat salad in La Trinidad.
Anyways, enough of the bad vibes. She'll get her comeuppance soon.
Breathe out the bad, and breathe in the good.
Life is beautiful. Hard work is beautiful. Good friends are beautiful.
The sun has set on the past.....
...time to ride the great steed......
....cross the bridge and seize the new day!
By the way, His Royal Orangeness Karl Willem and PA/PR Gromit welcome a new member of the Orange posse.
HRO Karl Willem has appointed a new lawyer to represent HRO's best interests.
Moving on, some things will never change. I will still be short, fat, old, and fugly and I will consume ridiculous quantities of coffee.
I watched the film adaptation of Suskind's "Perfume" today. The film is visually stunning but I think this movie needs to be remade 100 years from now when Smell-o-rama comes back into fashion to get the full experience. This is after all, a novel about 'smell'. Generally, it is a decent adaptation. I just couldn't get over the fact that this film version of a novel set in France had the actors deliver their dialogue with regional English accents. (At least Dustin Hoffman tried to be in character with a dodgy Italian -ish twang.) And, although it's European cinema (apparently, it's the most expensive German film ever made), the Hollywood treatment meant the climactic orgy scene in the square in Grasse felt so sterile. Sure there were 5000 naked bodies (a cinematic achievement no doubt, worthy of Spencer Tunick), but it didn't give me a throbbing hard on as the novel did. (Incidentally, will this film be shown in the Philippines without cuts? It has a scene of the Bishop being fellated.)
