Back from a hectic but fun trip to Singapore with the weirdoks girls. The last five / six days have been quite intense. Juggling various (and sometimes conflicting) shopping and site-seeing agendas, mood swings, nervous ticks and self-destructive tendencies has been an exercise in self-control, patience, respect and understanding -- for all of us. It was a rollercoaster ride - Weirdoks Anonymous style:

slapandpop and I set off on the first day fresh and worn out from a night with no sleep and a huge debate on happiness, selfishness and which rockstar (dead or alive) we would do in a heartbeat. Needless to say, we were pretty zonked out by the time we met up with the rest of the girls.

Hit the ground running upon arriving in Singapore. The "legendary" Merlion sightseeing tour with acid_attacks and asdfkl and the Weirdok Apprentice. No one wanted to go, but everyone thought everyone else was dying to get a photo taken with that freaking Merlion. So no one complained -- until we got home, feet sore and tired.

Ikea was where things began to really get hectic. It brought out the most rabid shoppers in all of us. I headed straight for the kitchen section to buy practical kitchen items like tongs and mixing bowls, laughing at myself for being so mundane. Then FlyGirl out-did my mundanity by buying shoe racks. fairlycloudy and gurlygurlracer outdid us all by buying trash cans.

Hanging out with the Weirdok Apprentice is always fun. Her unique and highly-skewed sensibilities never fail to floor me. I gave her a bunch of colouring books as pasalubong, one of which was a Dexter's Laboratory colouring book. She coloured Dexter and DeeDee in black and said "Look, I burned them!", then proceeded to "burn" other pictures in her colouring books. A four-year old pyromaniac-wannabe.

Then there was the pool game from hell on Saturday night. A fucking expensive pool hall with awful pool tables with no friction and messed up rails. We could have lived with that but not being allowed to smoke and order anything stronger than Pepsi and Iced Milo made that place hell on earth. So after a few rounds, we gave up and headed to the condo to hang out by the pool and wallow in nicotine.

Sentosa on Sunday. Shopping, shopping, shopping and more shopping on Monday and Tuesday.

By the fourth day, I was feeling the need for space and silence -- and my own bed.

By the fifth, my nerves were frayed.

Wouldn't trade the experience for anything, though.

More photos up on Flickr: Weirdoks in Singapore

Tags: good days, pointless posts, tripping away
state of mind: calm

Storm Signal #3 in Metro Manila today.

Schools and offices on all levels, closed.

All flights cancelled.

Southern Luzon Expressway closed off.

Trees, billboards, rooftops, walls, buildings falling, pinning people to death, making loud noises, leaving debris. Lots and lots of debris. Sections of Robinson Galleria and Market! Market! roofs have collapsed. A building in Calamba has collapsed and hurt about 50 people.  My balcony's flooded and everything in it pretty much soaked. Our lone plant has been uprooted; all its tiny flowers, dead.

No electricity in Metro Manila. Even the electricity company's offices don't have electricity (getting that SMS from a friend who works from the said company was hilarious). Electricity will not be back for the rest of the night. I hope the generator in this building lasts us the night.

Manila Mayor declares Manila in a state of calamity. I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds serious.

But life goes on.

The Inquirer and GMA-7 are still delivering up-to-date news.

Politicians are still going on and on and on and on about the proposed Charter Change.

The Philippine government is making a move to have an Islamic group on the US and UN terrorist blacklist -- so anti-terrorism and all its tentacles are still alive.

There were people in the mall today when Cirio and I stepped out briefly to buy food for the kitty cats.

According to gurlygurlracer, our favourite pool spot is open for business tonight. She's been there since 4pm, since her office closed down for the day.

And I'm online.

Tags: bad days, life in manila, pointless posts
state of mind: blah
background noise: marcy playground -- sex and candy