.:Separation Anxiety:.

Whether it be LS or some other station, I am pretty sure that I will not end this year as Radio 1 no matter what. Not that I don't want to stay as Radio 1 because I really do, but let's face it: I'm not getting a job in Radio 1 in the first place, so what's the point of sticking around? In any case, I went to the station this morning to finally meet Chico and Delle after around two weeks of being absent for training.

Anyways, they already heard about what might happen with LS or Star FM, although of course, neither showed any visibly telltale reactions. I don't think the fact that they've had their share of transferring stations could remove the disappointment or whatever negative notion they'd get from seeing someone else among them transfer as well. Not that I'm such a big loss to RX, really. I mean, their openings are pretty much covered already...

Chico used my topic for the Hot 10, in what turned out to be quite a freaky coincidence. It's the "Hot 10 Things You'd Say To A Pervert In A Theater", based on the harrowing experience Grace recently had while we were watching a film in Megamall, I believe. Some bastich was lying on the cinema floor already...

I hope I can still end up as a DJ for RX someday, though. That'd really be meeting half of my simple dreams. Let the dreams of grandioseness wait.

.:Scoot:.

I left the station at around 8:00 or so and headed off to Grace's house to drop in on her unexpectedly. I was pretty much happy that I was with her for a good two or so hours. She's been really lovely to talk to, and we recently had some interesting dialogue there all the same. Ah, well.

Marcelle: But Grace! While I said she'd be holding the laptop closed and the mouse is just dangling downwards strategically while she bites her eyeglasses, I also meant she'd be fully clothed!

Grace: See? You're too vague!

Marcelle: And how did I become water?

And then, I began to see the future...

Grace: Of course, the girlfriend has to get her way in the relationship all the time.

Marcelle: Yes. The girl should really get her way.... *Grace smiles at me*

Marcelle: ... some of the time... *Grace glares at me*

Marcelle: ... half of the time... *Grace still glares at me*

Marcelle: ... most of the time... *Grace smiles at me again*

This couple is one for the books. But I'm glad. Really glad.

.:Sigh:.

I left Grace's house a little before eleven and headed off to Ateneo to hopefully go online a bit, get my graduation pictures, and then hang around Hobby Haven in anticipation of Jason's celebration. In any case, there were an insane amount of occurrences in between. For one, I never got my graduation pictures, as the people responsible didn't get to even have negatives of a good chunk of us. Such incompetence...

Still, they gave me a VCD copy of the whole thing for "compensation", which is ludicrous, truth be told, as they initially wanted to charge me an extra 100 for it. Absurd.

Watching the VCD and remembering that magical night does little to make me feel much better. It just reminds me how everyone else graduated and moved on, yet here I am, still stuck in the academe. It would've been so much better if I were already a Teaching Assistant, but no, apparently, it doesn't work that way for this jabroni....

Wish I can watch how the SOM-SOSE graduation exercise went. I suppose some of my friends would have a copy of that...

.:Hanging Around:.

I stayed at Hobby Haven for the longest time, in anticipation of mobilizing to Gerry's Grill in Libis for Jason's birthday celebration. In the meantime, I was just talking with Jason and Charlene for the most part. It was all good, considering how fun our conversations went, especially when this cute little girl named Polski came along. She apparently hangs around the store a lot and prefers to stay in Hobby Haven. Jason was teaching her words like "Nenok", which of course makes me question sincerely what he intends to do when he has a son/daughter of his own in the future.

And yes, I also noticed that he was hitting on Charlene quite a bit.

Anyways, what was funny was when the topic shifted to NuSkin, we all had really funny commentaries on it. Eventually, I was made to consider joining NuSkin if one of their Chinese members would make it... worth my while. I was throwing the sales pitch to Charlene, though, to see if she'd actually be interested in networking. I mean come on, it stares you right in the face that it's networking, and you still deny it? So what the Hades is it? A pyramid scheme?

Heard Abby tried NuSkin for a while as well… no go for me, though. I don’t need to make any enemies right now. Unless, as I said… someone makes it… worth my while. No, it’s not what you’re thinking.

Jason: Ah, but when it comes to you, Marcelle, it’s always what we think.

Charlene sort of freaked out over the Chinese connection, though. Jason wants to teach in Poveda, I want to teach in ICA. Maybe Cheng Kuang or Chang Kai Shek, even, if I'm that desperate already.

I was showing off my new Wrestlemania Tin, which I got from the mail. It was really good, truth be told. Peppy actually caught up, and then I showed him the tin, pointed to Stacy and Torrie, then...

Marcelle: Oh sure, Goldberg and Lesnar are in the pictures too, but eff them.

Peppy: No, I'd rather not.

.:Gerry's Grill:.

So in a while, it was finally time to mobilize. I decided to ride with Jason and Mikko instead of Madame Jess, and Mikko was laughing at my facial reaction when I pointed to Peppy before considering going with them...

We arrived at Gerry's Grill and had crablets for appetizers. Lorenz, a new acquaintance, was playing Monopoly on Jess' palmtop, and I joined in. We lost to the computer. Sad...

Nonetheless, people started filing in soon enough, and we all started ordering. Everyone had the alleged "Pink Lemonade" for the most part. This so-called lemonade is actually pomelo juice. Sisig and Squid were the main attractions of the night, no question about it. Peppy wasn't eating a lot of the stuff, though, and was goaded into trying the Bicol Express, which was so hot it's good. Mog arrived with his cute cousin, Rebecca (Dubbed "Bechay" by Mikko.). There was also Tin-Tin, the Chinese girl with blue streaks, and her boyfriend. A few other people mostly working on Orsem, and Henry. Needless to say, we were packed.

Noteworthy though is how Jason kept on dancing to the tunes playing, and how Footloose was the only song that I really knew the steps to, so I made sure I can demonstrate the steps...

And yes, the one-year plan was still a topic of discussion. Note that Peppy is known to never eat pasta...

Jason: Peppy, I heard you ate pasta at Sacha's house. You know what we should do for your birthday? We'll have a pasta party, and for you to be motivated to eat pasta, Sacha can be there, wearing ONLY pasta. Some macaroni here, a bit of lasagna there... you know you want it.

Peppy: Uh... no.

Jason: You also don't like crablets? How about we get the same idea, and make Sacha wear LIVE crablets? Marcelle could finally have his FHM shoot!

Wonder what Sach would do to Jason when she reads about this...

In my short convo with Abby, though, she suggested a joystick controller in place of a mouse for Sacha's photoshoot...

... Maybe not.

Nonetheless, things were all fun. I really enjoyed the company, and on the way back, Peppy and I hitched with Madame Jess, and we were talking about the web design job opportunity. I finally found out Madame Jess' precise line of work, as well as Henry's. Career talks have been going great, and lest I jinx it, I'll talk about a certain one next week, perhaps.

One of my high school classmates was a waiter in Gerry’s Grill, though. Terence Soncuya, one of those fratboys in Don Bosco Mandaluyong. They sure are crawling out of the woodwork. I ran into another one of them a couple of weeks ago while boarding the LRT. I also ought to mention the fact that these people were the ones I usually had clashes with in high school. I never forget. Maybe they do, but Hades, I don’t.

.:On The Way Back:.

In the car, we even ended up talking about our high school computer classes (Nowadays, the kids are into HTML! Wow...). I had Auto CAD back then, I was the best Powerpoint maker in my class, and I was pretty good at making programs in QBasic format. Peppy and Madame Jess had fun picking apart those archaic programs, though they never got to watch Computer Man, so I couldn't really give them a dose of that. I have the pilot episode on Betamax, though... :)

Afterwards, I hitched with Peppy to Grace's house, where I slept over. I was too tired to even talk to Grace for long. Jason is one Hades of a guy, no question about it. If I were invited and I had funds as well, I would've gone with them to Malate, but since I had neither, no go for me.

Wait until my celebration... of course, that'd be a bit tame... Peppy had a shot of Tequila in Jason's party, and Jason was wondering why I'm putting my life in the hands of the man who nearly killed him twice by riding with him...

Omigod! We're gonna hit!

(In a morose voice...) Oo nga.

Then Jason gets this SMS...

Jason, happy birthday. It's been nice knowing you. You were right. DEATH!

Happy birthday again, jabroni. Glad you heard your on-air greeting.

.:Saturday Mayhem:.

I headed out to Greenhills for a RAW Deal tournament which, by hook or by crook, I wanted to make sure will push through. With that being said, it didn't matter if only four people showed up, I made the tournament happen, anyway. Ryan Ramos won the tournament for the Undisputed Title. He was using my Los Guererros deck, which ironically did better than my Evolution deck, as it seemed Mike Legaspi, the guy who borrowed my Evo, was a wee bit too dependent on getting Wrestlemania to trigger when he should've just finished the match there and there.... ah, well. That's all right, I guess.

In any case, the next tournament will be two Saturdays from now, although I'll be moving the time from 3:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon to make way for latecomers to have a better shot at getting into the tournament. That's a good idea, I suppose.

I then went with Mitch, Paolo, and Archie, along with a new acquaintance, Jolly. They are more or less about to start on the Marvel VS System game, which actually looks to be interesting, although immensely expensive to play. The guy who's getting them into the game seems to be still lacking key cards, yet has already purchased three or four booster boxes of the game already. I guess the cards there are a bit tougher to manage.

The way I see it, I suppose RAW Deal can be well-handled here in the Philippines if I find a wrestling merch store. If anyone knows where I can buy WWE stuff, particularly one-size fits all t-shirts, I'd really want to know where. I'm really hoping to get better prize support by adding that to the fray...among other things, of course. At the same rate, I know that most other card games have better prize support, but I suppose the best way for me to ensure that RAW Deal thrives is by really paying for some prizes myself, which I hope to do as soon as I find work...

.:Travel To Unknown Regions:.

I rode with Mitch and company to go to Jolly's house, and we ended up playing basketball with a few kids (We obviously held back for the most part.). Mitch was trying to get me to hit on the girls in the area (I was... a bit less... conservative with my fashion sense than usual...), and I didn't notice until the last moment that one of them was of a certain type...

While playing basketball, we were given nicknames. Mitch was "T-Shirt", Paolo was "Polo", Jolly was "Jollybee", Archie was "Sando", which changed into "Lex Luthor" the moment he took it off (He sports a shaved head which Mitch sometimes mistakenly grabs instead of the ball at times, by the way.), and they were calling me "Yao Ming". Fun stuff, really. I guess I'm not that keen on basketball, although Mitch and Paolo really got a kick out of watching me play Kobe Bryant on NBA Live 2004. 42 points in 20 mintues. How cool is that? To think that I still had a fair share of assists, steals, and rebounds.

In any case, as Mitch was about to step into Jolly's house to greet Jolly's wife, he tripped and landed on his hands and knees. Jolly commented...

Alam mo, Mitch. Okay na yung bumati ka. Hindi mo na kailangang sumamba.

They were building some Marvel decks, and they even taught me how to play the game. I like how the game goes. It's hard to win tournaments, though. Their cards are hideously expensive, and arguably more so than RAW Deal, since you need four of the key cards all the same. At least, I could borrow Mitch's deck if I want to play some Marvel...

After the games, we were resting a bit, and trying to see how HHH does that spitting water thing, as I personally can't do it. Afterwards, Archie started demonstrating the "Ispageting Ocho-Ocho", which is one of the most challenging dance steps I've ever seen. Mitch also had some funny stories about his houseboy, who had a heavy Chinese accent...

Mitch's Mom: Bumili ka nga ng Funchum Orange diyan sa may 7-11 sa kanto. Marami tayong bisita na darating ngayon, eh.

The houseboy goes to 7-11, then comes back.

Houseboy:Ate, wala po, eh.

Mitch's Mom: Ah, hindi. Punta ka sa aisle 8. Dun sa may kanan, alam ko, may Funchum.

The houseboy leaves, goes to 7-11, and comes back with one tetra pack.

Good Gawd.