my apologies to my friend bren who asked me to do this. see, it was only the other day that i learned she tagged me to make an entry on 20 random facts about myself. i haven't been into blogging lately due to, ok i admit, laziness, hence this delayed response. i could have chosen to ignore bren's tag (pretend i never read her blog) but i think i owe it to her to do this, being a good friend that she was back in college.

1. my name is gladyz. anyone who thinks i just spell my name with a 'z' at the end because it's funkier that way is free to look at my birth certificate and validate. I have never met anyone whose name is spelled exactly as mine and that makes me feel so special in this world.

2. my name in welsch means lame, and I am. if you count the number of times i get bumped, papercut and scratched in the last five years and multiply each by hundred bucks, I'd probably be a millionaire now. no kidding.

3. my legs get itchy when i walk or jog  a long distance. a medical mystery to me. 

4. i love the sprinkled freckles on my arms, makes me feel like I'm a weasley kin.

5. i have small hands and i have this grand illusion that e.e. cummings wrote this line for me 'nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands' (from somewhere i have never traveled).

6. unlike bren, i am a non-alcoholic. i have never consumed a single bottle of beer without mixing water or sprite on it. i do not like milk or orange juice either. but anytime, you have an afternoon tea party, i'm up for it. i'm british that way.

7. i am a sale slut. my best finds usually came from the discounted item racks.

8. i am a sushi monster. my constant craving for sushi was born not when i was in japan. it was when i moved to california that i started to have a regular weekly dose of sushi rolls. and, it doesn't help that we currently live across a japanese restaurant.

9.  i do not have a sense of brand loyalty (except for head and shoulders) so i am the best target consumer for product advertisements. i try whatever appeals to my senses. and with pride, i say, that this attitude has led me to many important 'discoveries' from grocery stores. 

10. in the past two years, i couldn't remember being extremely mad at someone or something. not that i actually want to get angry. i'm just proud of how i become a calm and forgiving person that i am now (as opposed to what i was in my younger years).

so there you have my random facts. now it's my time to tag everyone in my link - d, meds, mel, suyin and bong (whenever he is ready to revive his blog. no pressures though).

it's been more than a month since i've last written here. i have not forsaken my blog nor have i ceased being an observant. in fact, i do have so many things to write about - random thoughts that come to me in the most unusual circumstances; issues that bug my consciousness; places and people that are worth telling. but all these have remained mere ideas that have never been translated into writing -- like a choreographed dance that is constantly practiced in private but is never performed in front of anyone else.

i would never become a writer. i never was.

today is st. patrick's day and in his honor, we all donned green in the office today. two of my co-workers prepared muffins with green icing and green rice krispies which we shared throughout the day. and, in some irish pub in the city, my colleagues are probably drowning in green beers now while i crave for a green tea frappuccino here at home.

way back in college, green was my favorite color. almost all the things i owned were green, my mind included  i don't know how it and when it happened but i found myself gradually losing the 'greenness' in me. perhaps it was elle wood's influence that i have joined the 'pretty in pink' club or it was jk's doing (green = sly gangs of slytherin house), or it was simply a testament to how i have evolved into a fine young lady that i have chosen pink over green. today, i only have four green garments in my closet - two tops, one military jacket and one dress. i had long retired my green keroppi mirror which i always carried in my purse. the only thing that's left now is my green hair doctor which i have no intentions of replacing. it is, in a way, one of the seven horcruxes of my life (i have yet to find out what the 6 others are. oh! i love it when i can use hp references every now and then to confuse non-HP readers. haha!)

it still warms my heart to see green, like the luscious grass outside my apartment or the statue of liberty in all her grandeur. it reminds me of a time when i was young and life's images were pretty much simple, perceived only in two colors: green and the others, nothing in between. more importantly, it reminds me of my own journey to consciousness. it's like how it is in the film great expectations when all throughout the film, save for the very last scene, ethan hawke and gwyneth paltrow are wearing green and when they finally see each other in a different light (that was the last scene), they are wearing white. i learned in my cinematography class back in college that green symbolizes a journey to consciousness. i do not know whether or not the film's director has intentionally used the color to signify this process but it does make sense in the end, if one knows the meaning of colors in cinematography. my life is not at all a movie, but it is nonetheless great expectations-like in that way. my affair with green-colored things in the past represented my personal quest to self-identity, nothing more than a prelude to the woman in pink that lied beneath the green exterior. 

today marks our 7th year as a couple (the old date, as we would like to put it). i've often heard about the so-called seven-year itch but i don't seem to get that feeling at all. right now all i can think about is how i am itching to have raj back at home. this is the first time we celebrated this day in two different time zones.

it's hard to believe that seven years had already passed since raj and i officially became a couple. the memories of how everything transpired remains vivid in my mind like it was only a day or two that it happened.

i commemorate this day not because it was when everything started. no, it began even before that. ours was a classic story of two best friends falling in love (like ron and hermione --- ok, i just have to say that! or barney and laura --- i am reading 'doctors' for the 5th time). and that didn't stop either when we became a couple because everyday, i find myself falling in love over and over again with him. and, i live in these moments.

for others, seven is a lucky number (ask lord voldy). but to say that i am lucky in love is an understatement. this is more than pure luck playing its part; more than a match point won in a series of overtime. this is a prayer heard by God, the blessing of a lifetime.

cheers to us!

the ironies of great american dream:

my officemate was born in New York and sometime later in his younger years, moved to Malta where his parents were originally from. when he was old enough to decide for himself, he forfeited his american citizenship to enjoy the full benefits of being a maltese national. alas! he met and fell in love with a smart and pretty american girl and went through all the rigors of becoming a naturalized american citizen when he married her.

and as alanis would have sung, isn't it ironic, don't you think?

i got my green card when i was 17 years old. i could have been a citizen now had i decided to stay continuously, but i had been blinded by the ideals of my youth that i decided to return to my home country instead. the irony of it all is that this one thing that i denied in the past is the very same thing that i eagerly want to have now. truth is, i would go and kiss bush's ass, literally and figuratively, if that would make me a naturalized american citizen.

but before all you filipino patriots throw stones at me, let me explain my side.

i want this not because i'm turning my back against my own country nor because i am embrrassed of being a filipino. please understand that this is the fastest and easiest way to be with the person i love the most every day of the year --physically. this issue of citizenship and nationality have kept us physically apart for three weeks now and frankly, i do not know how much more i can take without him by my side. i am going crazy.

acquiring an american citizenship doesn't make me less of a filipino. i would be no one but a 'little brown American' with a strange accent. my filipino ethnicity remains just as my heart and my pride will always be that of a filipino, to and for the filipinos.

becoming an american national does not make me better than anyone else either. if at all, it will only make me happier and more at peace because if it happens, then there will be no more tonights like this when i can write the saddest lines (with aplogies to the great pablo neruda).

dinner with officemates again. last week it was a japanese restaurant. tonight, it was mediterranean and it was a treat for a japanese member of the international sales team who was in town for a visit. i didn't want to go because i was feeling a bit tired but i figured my social skills would matter when they have me evaluated for my job in about two months from now, so i decided to go.

mediterranean food was ok. i was never the adventurous type when it comes to tasting food so i never had any inkling of how the food would taste, except for shawarma but which we didn't order. food was ok. some of them i liked. the others i didn't that i had to drink plenty of water to drown the awful taste. come to think of it, the pita bread and the eggplant hummus were the only food that i actually liked. dinner was mixed with intelligent conversations ranging from films (a debate on brokeback mountain), travel, media, politics and culture. the highlight of the dinner was my officemates proposing a toast for me and my boss commending my work as 'very impressive actually' (in her cute French accent).

after finishing dinner at 11:30, we decided to hit one of the most popular bars in town and go dancing. the last time i remember dancing in a bar was december 2004 (that long!!! i had an entry of that here in my blog) and raj was away too. dancing is therapeutic to me. i've always resorted to it when raj is away. raj was in pinas when we went clubbing in japan. meds and i went to limits once when raj was away for a business trip. and, tonight is no different. there we were dancing the night away until the bar closed at 1:30am (hey, this is a small town!) it was fun, i enjoyed swaying my body to the beat of this generation's music but there was a voice inside me that said i no longer belong to the dancefloor. not because i feel too old to be in hip places but because my priorities have changed over time.

going back from the gimmick was one of the hardest 'coming home' moments i've had. after spending about two hours in a place cramped with people and with blaring sounds all over, the quiet and emptiness of the house greeted me. and that was when i realized that i would rather have the silence of the night with the company of raj than all the food and the dancing i had; that i would never trade the sound of his voice to the upbeat music that brings out the dancer in me; that there is nothing more therapeutic than telling him how my day went. tonight of all nights, i miss raj so terribly -- and, was the first time dancing has let me down.    

disclaimer: this entry is dedicated to my younger sister who shares my love for won-won; not for non-HP readers.

today is ronald weasley's birthday and to honor this special day of my favorite HP character, i am wearing for the first time the shirt i bought at hot topic some months ago. it's a promotional shirt with ron's 'yule ball' face on it and it cost me thirty dollars and i've never worn it because i feel it would be sacrilege do so. me ---> crazy, i know!

anyway, ron is perhaps one of the most underrated characters in HP. and i hate how the film versions portray him nothing more as the hero's goofy sidekick. he's not given the attention that he truly deserves. here is where the books parallel reality. in the books, ron feels overshadowed by his siblings (bill, the pretty guy; charlie, the dragon-tamer; percy, the smart prat; fred and george,the  amazing twins; and ginny, the only girl and the first one to be born in the weasley clan after several generations). similarly, in real life that is the Potter universe, he is often overshadowed by harry's nobility and bravery and by hermione's cleverness.

my sister said ron is turning 26 today, that is if jkr decides not to kill him in the book. she fears this. i am confident jkr wouldn't do that. after all, ron is HP's sam (in LOTR). he represents the ordinary folks and if she kills off his character, it would be an insult to the majority of us who relate with ron. so i assure my sister that ron would live happily ever after with hermione, that they would have kids and would possibly grow older than dumbledore.

to ron weasley, happy birthday!

dante's peak was on TV tonight and i watched it while sitting on our newly-delivered sofa bed (loaned to me by the big boss in our office, isn't she the nicest? and she's even thanking me for taking the sofa. like i'd say no that huh?!) anyway back to dante's peak, the first time i saw this movie was way back my college days at UP. i think i saw it with joanne. it left an impact on me because the philippines and mount pinatubo were mentioned once in the film and because i've always liked disaster films.

for some reasons, disaster films (no matter how seemingly hopeless the situation is) always leave the viewers a ray of hope. at the end of the day, the lead characters survive huge volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquake, climate changes or any other natural disaster that Hollywood can bring in to a film. they may come injured and traumatized but alive and breathing nonetheless. moreover, disaster films are not only action- and adventure-packed, but also informative in the sense that they can explain in less scientific way why and how natural disasters happen.

i've never been in a major disaster. the closest i could think of was the 1990 earthquake in manila, and that artificial twister and intensity 9 earthquake that we experienced in a theme park at florida. i think that when put into a really major situation like the one in dante's peak, i'd probably just surrender myself to mother nature, especially if i've lost everything already, particularly all my loved ones. plus, i couldn't see myself being able to run away (literally) from the scene of the disaster. my legs are simply not trained to run, unless there's a rush of adrenalines which i haven't experienced yet. when i watched jurrasic park, i realized i'd probably be one of the first people to die in events like those because i don't think i have enough strength and energy to run for my life.

and oh, here's a trivia on me and mt. pinatubo (since it was mentioned in dante's peak), i can still remember the day it erupted. it was very dark outside, there was ash fall and since there was nothing to do outdoors, i played family computer all day long and that was when i finished for the first time the super mario game. being able to save the princess (after six months of trying) was a gloroius moment for me back then and that is why up to now, i still vividly recall the day of the eruption.