And Hell Froze Over

Strange and curious things.


Just the other day two significant people from my past suddenly popped up in my portable personal electronic communications device (that's a cell phone, to the less-pretentious of us.)

From out of the blue was my ex-girlfriend. The one I ever truly loved. 

I know she's on Facebook and I had scanned her FB profile exactly once ever since she wisely refused my ideas of a life together. Instead, she relocated to Singapore, where we hugged in the train station very cinematically the first time I visited her. We spent a lovely day then at the zoo, neither talking about what had been but silently wishing each other well.

Two years later she upped and married a nice expat - whom I spent awkward moments with sharing thrill rides at some odd amusement park at the anus of Singapore while she grinned at us from the safety of the solid ground below - and had lovely children in the Caribbean.


"Let's have lunch!" she exclaimed over Private Messaging. "Come up to the house if you can."


Ah.


The house.


Where I stood awkwardly at her doorstep one evening, exchanging wordless glances with her ex-boyfriend, who was also there for Lord knows what reason.

Or maybe she was the reason. Not unlike her - with her flair for the dramatic - to have planned it that way, as the wide grin on her face revealed when she saw two young men after her hand standing in her doorway.

Neither of whom would win a life with her in the end, anyway.



The other blast from the past was my ex-BFF.

The one I swore never to talk to again until after our little unfortunate business venture was at an end.

Which did end: miserably, mercifully, finally, after seven arduous years.



For his part, he chose Viber to slither back into my life.



"Hey Rudi, how are you?"


I didn't see the message until late the next day.


"Ahhh hello," I responded at the unknown number. "And this is...?"

"Vincent"



I took a full 24 hours before I replied.


"And I thought the Apocalypse was a no-go."


Well. I did promise I wouldn't speak to him until after the venture was done.

And now that it's done, I am bound to my word. The same way I honored it by cutting off all communications with him for the past six years.


And while I'm musing, why would my ex-girlfriend want to have lunch, after all these years ? After I boycotted her wedding and missed every significant event in her life after that?


Like I said: strange and curious things.

Trés Misérables

Burn, bitches.

Like my good friend Maleficent and, probably, you, I was not invited to Resorts Worlds Manila's formal-attire only gala premiere of Tom Hooper's Les Misérables.

But fear not. There was no need to cast curses involving spindles and eighteen-year olds falling asleep for a hundred years.

Because schadenfreude is my middle name, I simply wonder - with much concern and sadness, to be sure - how tres misérable the chi-chi crowd felt at last night's disastrous non-showing of that famous film. 

Lame Misérables, as a pundit acquaintance of mine put it.

Technical difficulties, indeed. I understand Wilson Tieng looked ready to burst several blood vessels after this major major social snafu, the poor dear. All those VIPs dressed to the nines, with Christian Bautista, Karylle, Audie Gemora and other singers performing live numbers from the musical (accompanied on piano by no less than Ryan Cayabyab!) as a front act to a gala that was not to be.

Alors, alors, c'est-la vie, oui?

Et parce que plus de choses changent, plus ils restent le méme, regardez-vous cette nouvelle caravane pour Les Misérables: la nouvelle adaptation cinematographique de Tom Hooper. Avec Hugh Jackman étoile comme Jean Valjean, Russell Crowe étoile comme Javert, Anne Hathaway comme Fantine, et Amanda Seyfried comme Cosette.

Je ne connais pas la fille que joue Eponine ( Samantha Barks, en remplancement de Taylor Swift et Scarlett Johansson), mais n'en faire pas.

Oui, oui, j'adore, j'adore!

Transitions

I bumped into Lu, quite by chance, while doing chores this morning at Greenbelt. And learned first-hand that her move to Canada is definite. As of next Tuesday, she will be shivering in Ontario/Vancouver/Edmonton, clad in her Muji winterwear.

Her departure was merely coincidental - or so she says - with D's decision to pack up their Makati office. He spent the better part of the previous holiday season moving his stuff (and God forbid, his staff) here.

Coupled with all the equipment I schlepped when we shut down my own little bar early last year, this two-storey house is getting pret-ty crowded.

In the midst of all this moving and chaos, I wonder how our resident ghosts are taking everything. I hope the good ones stay.


And as of this afternoon, this text:

"It's official...O-bar Malate closes 

on Jan. 31, fyi."

The sinister Chinese Saruman of Malate strikes again.

And So It Begins

A week into the new year.

Well, well into work.


And these, in quick succession, from three different ex-employees :

1. "Bos, nasa ospital ang anak ko."

2. "Bos, may alam ba kayong maaaplayan? Na-endo na kasi ako."

3. "Bos, buti ka pa marami agad trabaho. Wala pang kasiguruhan kasi 

     yung inaplayan ko."

Breathe.



Then breathe again.