Assortment

.:First Day At A New But Very Short-Term Job…:.

For most likely one week only, I will be doing marketing for Integrated Arts and Services as a New Media Marketing guy, who will pretty much be doing promotions and awareness campaigns for the company under Viral Medium, which appears to be a new company under them for new media marketing.

I got to work and it was really eventful, considering I was really just in front of a computer the whole day. It more or less boiled down to me finding numerous ways to promote the Hades out of The Challenge Of The Super-Duper Friends in order to generate a lot of awareness about the video. So far, with all the hits it’s been getting on YouTube and the site itself, the effort has been working out.

I even ran into a friend online and she was wondering if I could do the same kind of marketing for her, but the obvious problem would be she wanted me on referral basis, which is a problem for me since marketing does not automatically translate to sales, yet I would still invest time and effort into it, regardless. There’s also the problem that it’s hard to trace any business back to me even if I do bring them business… Sigh…

That being said, I mostly spent the whole day at work and playing footsie and exchanging gay jokes with my temporary boss, Jonas, and bonding with my brother’s ex’s sister, Laya. Talking to them and hearing from them really gives me less skewed and more objective ways of looking at things, truth be told. That’s a good thing.

.:Sana Maulit Muli Terribly Disappointed Me…:.

For the entire season Sana Maulit Muli was on, I praised the brilliant writing of the series. I let the bad acting and the heavy product placements slide, because the script was tight, and even if it was unoriginal in the face of “If Only”, I still didn’t mind since their execution was going pretty well.

Throughout the series, I felt the highs and lows of young love, sweet love. It was a bit heavy-handed with all the forever’s being thrown about, but hey, almost everyone’s idealistic when it comes to first love. The dynamic between Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson when they play off of Michael De Mesa is brilliant because Michael De Mesa as the guardian of fate really works.

Even the other cast members were pretty good. Who would’ve thought Mickey Ferriols could pull off the mother role? Glydel Mercado was good at being the villain, and Jay Cayuca pulls off the angsty but sensitive brother very well. The less said about Gloria Diaz and Chritian Bautista (Or is it Mark Bautista? Or Erik Santos? I tend to forget.), the better.

So with a mostly good recipe for a soap opera, how could they screw it up?

Why, pretty much the way nearly every single ABS-CBN soap screws itself over: the ending.

Just once, I wasn’t expecting a happy ending at all. The episode before the last one, Travis was in critical condition because he was there when Jasmine was almost hit by a truck that flew through badly done CGI. In order for him to live, Mang Andres implicitly struck a deal with Jasmine that if she followed what was supposed to happen and killed herself, she would make sure Travis doesn’t die.

But that doesn’t happen, and at the cost of Travis’ life, Mang Andres lost the game. Travis flatlined almost at the moment Jasmine jumped, which resulted in Tonton Gutierrez, who plays Kim Chiu’s father, managing to stop her from completely plummeting to her death. This pretty much invalidated Mang Andres’ agreement with Jasmine, since Travis died already, so the whole funeral bit happens, and we get a similar ending to “If Only”.

If they left it at that, it wouldn’t be a happy ending, but it would be a sensible one. But knowing how Filipinos love happy endings, you know they wouldn’t let that happen.

When Jasmine was handed Travis’ belongings by Travis’ mom, she finds the watch that Travis got from Mang Andres to help him go back in time, and for some weird reason, she figures out a way to use it to do the same thing.

How stupid was Mang Andres to not have a failsafe? I mean, if he really safeguards destiny, why does he even let people turn back time? It’s ridiculous because he not only left the watch with Travis even after he died, but it even worked indiscriminately.

The Deus Ex Machina was such a cop-out. She used the watch to turn back time, and they ended up meeting in Jollibee, because “lagi tayong masaya kapag nandito tayo”, and the product placement was just overboard! Even I can’t stand it anymore, how they just showed shot after shot after shot of Jollibee, and it was really just tacky.

Sana Maulit Muli started with a bang and ended with a horrible, horrible whimper. It was a gutsy series all the way, from putting two very untested talents in their lead roles, to breaking storytelling conventions by going back in time and frequently referencing past episodes for important plot points, to an engaging script, and it got to a very contrived and unpalatable ending that just made me reel in disgust.

.:Uh-Oh…:.

Ma, makikipag-lunch lang ako sa Katipunan today.

Sino naman ka-lunch mo?

Kaibigan ko lang.

Alam ko na. Yung pumunta dito nung isang araw, ano? Alam ko siya rin yung palagi mong kasama tuwing umaalis ka…

Ha? Hindi, ah!

Uh-oh… I think she’s bluffing, but I don’t want my Beloved to get into trouble…

.:Drawn Closer…:.

That recent brush with danger has helped draw me and my Beloved closer together, and for that, I’m thankful.

I understand her situation all too well. It’s not something new to me at all, but what I really find is that with that kind of understanding, I do not resent her for the situation she finds herself in, which is far more than could be said of me in the past, when I simply refused to understand that.

It helps that we have very open lines of communication. It helps that I feel she’s the closest friend I’ve ever had in years. Most of all, it helps that despite all the arguments, despite all the mood swings, despite all the quirks and idiosyncracies, we honestly love each other, and that love has already withstood our worst qualities.

That being said, we practically saw each other five times last week. That’s got to be a record of sorts…

My Beloved, you’ve been my source of sanity in the midst of all this craziness going on in my life today. I love you, and I am thankful you are by my side in spite of everything. I love you so much.