One Foot in Front of the Other

I would have loved to say that the reason I haven't been posting regularly is because I've been traveling, but the truth is I've just been preoccupied with a lot of other things. I've been a bad blogger. Still, my year has been dotted with some short trips here and there, proof that I've never really been one to stay put. Finally writing this post has been good for me. It was real. It happened. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it happened.

(Warning: This post is image-heavy)

Singapore (January)
I was on a plane bound for Manila on New Year's Day and I want to think that it set the tone for this year's travel plans. Two days after that, my youngest sister CJ and I headed to Singapore. It was both my graduation present to her (she started college last fall) and a chance for me to visit some dear friends.

No trip is complete without a visit to Clarke Quay. We headed there for a short walk on our first night and then returned a few days after to take the river cruise.

It was my first time at the Botanical Gardens. I would love to bring my mom to this place.

My sister insisted on getting a henna tattoo at Little India. She even brought her own design.

We headed to Chinatown on our last day. I insisted.

Taken at the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. I've been there a few times before but this was the first time I found out its name.


Macau (March)
This was a bittersweet journey for me. At first, I was excited for a very brief shake-up-the-weekend trip with my long-time travel buddy Liv (and new friend Mark).

Casinos everywhere. Of course we had to try one.

We stayed only a few blocks from Senado Square so this was a familiar sight. We passed by the Square whenever we went out or came back to the hotel.

Good morning, sunshine.

Liv took this photo in front of the Macau Tower, showcasing different artists' work celebrating the Year of the Horse. This was one of my favorites.

Ruinas de Sao Paulo, gutted but still standing.
One of my best friends--light of my life, heart-sister--was in the hospital before I left for this trip. Macau was one of the places that we had always talked of visiting but we never really got the chance to start any concrete plans. So I took photos and filed notes away, chronicling my trip for her, thinking of all the things I would tell her when I returned. At about four-thirty AM on the day that I was supposed to return, I woke to missed calls and messages and I knew that she had gone on a different journey without me. I still miss her.


La Union (April)
Every year, I only make one New Year's resolution (I believe in focusing). This year's went to seeing more of the Philippines. When my good friend and neighbor Mac invited me to go to La Union for Visita Iglesia, I jumped at the chance. I was still reeling from many things and I thought this was a good opportunity for me to find a little breathing room. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera so my photos ended up being mobile device-grainy.

Little town, it's a quiet village...

At the first church we visited. It had plenty of painted leaves and forests on the walls that it made me feel at peace.

Plenty of these old churches had these steps (or are they buttresses?) built against each side.

I liked the contrast between the dusty-looking brick church and the green that seemed determined to break through. Rally, heart.

Quezon (May)
I checked off something on my bucket list when another old friend (classmate of many years) Camille and I headed to Lucban, Quezon for the Pahiyas Festival. We tease each other about being kaladkarin (literally easy to drag along) and in the past few months we've been hoarding up on cultural experiences. Visiting Lucban was a nice change of pace and I would love to return to Pahiyas (time to befriend a local!) in the coming years.

The Pahiyas is definitely the most colorful festival I've seen.

Like seriously colorful. This is edible decor.

Even our food was colorful.

Pahiyas is a time to be grateful for the bountiful harvest, so it was common to see houses decorated with wheat and vegetables.

I didn't want to leave without taking a photograph of Mt Banahaw. My final opportunity came while we were speeding back to the tour bus on a tricycle. Camille held me while I leaned out to take this shot.
I wonder what sort of adventure the rest of the year has in store for me. Liv and I have another trip planned; Camille and I have been plotting one (it would be the first time we'd fly together) since the beginning of the year. But time is such a curious construct that all these really do feel like they were part of another life, and all the plans that we're making now still seem to be so far away. What I do know is that I wish I can always keep going somewhere, 'one foot in front of the other, through leaves, over bridges.'

The Plan.

then in winter
when there is no leaf left
invent one
- from Eve Merriam's Reply to the Question: "How can You Become a Poet?"

With all the work that I've been doing, my go-to reads have been the ebooks on my Kindle app. These lovely books have been claiming space on my bed for weeks, some months, touched only for a few pages in the morning or before I go to sleep at night. How to Build a Time Machine is the luckiest one, in a way, as I only have a few chapters left.

Here is the secret, to my heart's immediate desires, to the next few months, to the welcoming of a new year. The scientist's laboratory. The hidden lair.

There are plans, and there are plans.

The Substitute.

[...]Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.
- from Carl Dennis' The God who Loves You


Thea, Oz, and I agreed to meet up at a cafe just across Oz and my college alma mater. For Thea, it was an adventure; she studies at a rival school and would have little reason to head west of the city if we hadn't prodded her. For Oz and I, it was a chance to see up close how much things had changed since we graduated ten years ago.

Has it really been a decade? Some of our old haunts were still there, true, but most sported new faces. The small University Mall, dimly-lit and almost seedy-looking in my memory now looked very different. The Korean-inspired cafe we went to was one of the hipper (hipster?) additions to a neighborhood that was once littered with computer rental shops and shawarma places. As we picked our poisons, green tea and caramel in tall glasses, we reminisced about almost-hads and might-have-beens, in between moments of quiet which I'm sure took us in the opposite direction of the paths we had picked for ourselves back then.

I told them the cafe reminded me of the ones in Korea, the ones I wish I could visit again. What I really wanted to say was this: I wonder who I'd be if I had been born a decade later, if I were a student now, sipping coffee and doodling on a Polaroid in between classes. How much of myself would be reinvented, improved, discarded? Oh, the possibilities.

The Island.

Someday I will send everyone a card
with nothing on it, only
the calligraphy
of a river, and in the back
with invisible ink I will say:
Forgive my happiness,
I have betrayed you all.
- from Eric Gamalinda's Enough

Sausage and vodka pasta at Tibraz in Boracay. One of my favorite places on the Island. Crazy weekend. I thought I'd be writing but ended up quite hung over on Sunday morning. I'm too old for this, I think, too old for the parties that I was always too uncool for, too old for staying late or smiling at cute strangers.

And what will they say about the pudgy girl with the glasses, reading in the corner? Will they make up stories about me, just as I do about them? Will our stories meet in the middle, turn themselves into a quiet epic about the ocean, where it goes, what it whispers to anyone who listens?

The Longing.

I used to think, if we kissed

in every time zone, it would always be the blue hour
in which I loved you. It still is. The literal

lightning bolt lodged in your family tree. The erased
surname. The alibi bone placed inside you.

A secret takes on a shape beyond language, becomes
tangible, something potentially broken

in half, for the world to see and give words to.
- from Jeffrey McDaniel's Meeropol

Sometimes it just hits me, how I miss certain things and certain people. How different my life would have been if we had moved to Singapore like we had planned or if I had stayed in Hanoi on that strange whim that still haunts me from time to time. Would I still find myself sipping coffee at the What If Cafe of my thoughts, waiting for someone to arrive to tell me about his day? Oh, the stories we would share.

The Experiment.

By the time this post goes up, I should be in Korea, getting my fill of trendy little cafes and charming indie pop bands (wait for me, Standing EGG and Sweetpea!) and fangirl delusions. I've nixed Lonely Planet for Chinggay Labrador's Popped Too. I have Korean phrases written down on trusty index cards for emergencies: Please don't make it spicy or Where is the toilet?

But the real experiment is trying to go for about a week without checking my mail or my blog or my play-by-post RPG. Maybe it will work. Maybe I'll find myself experiencing major withdrawal before the week even begins. But here's to exploring the world outside my computer. See you!

The Anniversary.

Each moment gathers and thickens like awareness between the tips of fingers, explaining how the present can be plausible and lovely, even when later, returning once again to its monastery, the heart sounds the brown notes of its bell-clapper, shaves its head, lies down to sleep with the sorrow of what it will love but cannot keep. - Luisa Igloria, from The Return


Soon it will be five years since I started this blog. I thought it would be a good time to change the look into something a little more mine (in those five years, I've changed the blog look five times, but all of them relied on a pre-existing free template). Not this time though, thanks to my awesome friend, Cla who created the header and the sidebar buttons and fixed the whole look just for me. She did the photography and the calligraphy as well. :)

Five years, wow. This used to be such a private little space that only C, Camille, and Leki read. I'm glad that in those five years, I've met new people online who also enjoy the same interests I do and who have encouraged me to share more of my thoughts. If you're reading this, thank you. Have a virtual sorbet.

Days like this really make me look back on old times and old friends and how things have changed. But the present can be plausible and lovely, Luisa writes. I'll take it.

The Break.

It can’t already be June, it can’t already be Monday, that’s what they say, that’s what people keep muttering to themselves this morning as they cradle the last of the sleep in their coffee cups, for the precious moments in which they huddle in themselves before they must sign off their lives to something they don’t believe in, to something they think they cannot escape from. - Mariko Nagai, from Many are Called


A few weeks ago, I went on a trip with my best friends to visit our other best friends. It hasn't been easy for us; half the group in Singapore, the other half here. A married couple on each side of the ocean. A bachelorette to keep them company. But we make do. Long-distance calls. Quick weekends. Birthdays and weddings and holidays rolled into one. We exhaust ourselves on trips like this, walking everywhere, doing everything, but we are never really tired. We gossip well into the night and sleep in during the mornings. We snap pictures like crazy.


We find time for coffee, too, during those lazy mornings and in roadside nooks. There is always much to talk about. We exist here, in these pocket moments, always in each other's company. I miss them.

The Nightcap.

Always, we keep coming back for more. It's only been months since I last saw three of my closest friends but it really feels longer. So off we went to visit old friends, celebrate a birthday, shop our wallets dry, drink our hearts out. Only our idea of a nightcap is a warm pot of berry-flavored tea.

One more for the road.

The Summer.

All I'm missing is a hammock and my own private beach. In a few days, I'll be leaving our little home and heading to Manila and Singapore. Not too keen about spending the rest of the summer in the city's sweltering heat but the prospect of shopping and seeing old friends is enough to excite me. Orchard. Clarke Quay. Holland Village. Bugis. Chinatown. Sentosa. Marina Bay. Here I come.

The Escape.

Let's ride a trade wind like paper airplanes.
Let's watch the sky wheel & wheel 
from under straw hats.
- from Mike Dockins' Poem of Low Latitudes

It was the last hurrah of a three-week vacation in Manila, even though the Manila trip wasn't really a vacation or that this last hurrah wasn't even in Manila. I probably confuse you. But there was nothing confusing about that weekend in San Pablo where the sun stayed inside our cozy room, lingered in the loft; where the hammocks swung into the sunset; where I felt it was actually possible to escape in a world that looked and smelled and tasted like home.


I went everywhere with NK Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms that weekend. I could have easily been just as happy with Michael Ende's Never Ending Story or Madeleine L'Engle's And Both Were Young. If only I held on to it a little bit longer or smiled a little more often or remembered how much of a good thing I really had.

The Visit.

Late last year, my good friends Cla and Nina came for a three-day visit. I've blogged about them before, but there's something in the quiet that follows our crazy Ati-Atihan festival that makes me yearn for good company all over again.


Rumi writes, "Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love." And this year, I will, I will.

The Seeds.

Points if you can name the pop culture reference. (Well, points if you actually read this blog...)

These are addictive. As addictive, I guess, as Sergei Lukyanenko's Watch series. Or weekends spent playing mad, mad RPG. I had undead warriors and unsolved crimes these past couple of days. And lots and lots of blood.

Sometimes I want my world to stay as uncomplicated as this.

The Paradox.

Tarragon is far from being my drink of choice when reading as something as surreal as David Mitchell's number9dream. It almost sounds like one of Eiji Miyake's dream tangents. But there's something about tarragon that steadies me and makes celebrating my highly-rational physicist cousin's birthday in the middle of a warm and quaint garden sound like a perfectly natural decision.

To Miguel, smartest of minds, quickest of wits, and most generous of natures: happy birthday.

The Girls.

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. -Saki

There is much truth to this, or so I found this weekend. To celebrate my friend Kaoko's upcoming wedding in October, we planned a bachelorette party for her in Singapore. We escaped a mummy, danced three million years ago, and ended up drinking tea for three hours straight. Just four thirtysomething friends (five, if you include one very patient husband) rediscovering a world of warmth and possibility that they once knew as girls. There really is something about free-flowing tea that unleashes hundreds of stories, whether you're in the company of good friends or lost in your own imaginings.


I had Weekend in Moscow, a light and fragrant green tea with rose petals and almonds. It was exquisite. I could almost picture myself curled up against a window reading a Regency classic like Georgette Heyer's Cotillion or an adult fairy tale like Ali Shaw's Girl with Glass Feet or Kelly Link's fantastically macabre Pretty Monsters, with a cup of that tea, waiting for the world to go by.