It Has Been Quite a While

My last post was about the day I tried to runaway as a kid. It may seem that I haven't been posting much lately, but in the event that I do, I place those posts on my College Blog rather than in this one. The Weird Bunch haven't been getting into much weird misadventures of late. However, during the normal days, my mind is bursting with ideas! What if we did this, and what if we did that sort of ideas. But as quickly as those ideas come, they are gone by the time I sit in front of MacAvoy (he's my laptop, say hi).

So for today... I came up with no such idea. BUT I will do my best to create a short but satisfying misadventure for a few of the Weird Bunch members to experience. The roots of this story are heavily based on a whim. You may even say it is a thematic one. See how those two sentences somehow contradict each other? Yes.

You know what I realized, texted Ashley. We never had a Halloween party. You know, like in Friends.

A bus whizzed past and blew Ashley's hair into her face. Swiping it away with her index finger, she looked up, squinting into the blazing sun.

"The day is young," she observed. "But of course, I am no astronomer."

She blinked in thought.

"Astronomer? Astrologist?" she asked herself and shrugged, "Nah, never mind."

Meanwhile...

"I hate Math. I wish it would die." Paolo grumbled as he pored over another problem. "This doesn't even matter in the real world..."

Someone tapped him over the shoulder and Paolo, thinking it was his maid-servant, turned around to see an old man with a cloud of fluffy hair on his jaw glare at him with stone cold eyes.

"Screw you!" Archimedes said.

"Tell me what troubles you," Sigmund Freud spoke softly.

Ashley walked over to the couch and plopped herself down.

"I've been having problems... with whether to say 'astronomer' or 'astrologist.'"

Freud stared deeply into space and inhaled. He adjusted his glasses, looked down at his notes and said:

"I believe this stems from a certain repressed sexual desire to be detached from the real world. Perhaps you have repressed desires to be free--to travel into space--where you can fulfill all your sexual desires. And sexual desires, sexual desires, sexual--"

Ashley stood up abruptly and flushed.

"Excuse me, all I heard was 'sexual desires, sexual desires, sexual desires'! Do you think I'm horny or something?!"

"I told you not to go in that direction," muttered a drawling voice. Out of the shadows stepped Carl Jung.

"Stay out of this, Jung," Freud warned, shaking his forefinger. "I am entitled to my own interpretations."

Carl Jung gave him a disdainful look and turned to Ashley.

"My dear, you should come to me. I only interpret dreams as sexual when they are."

He whipped out a business card from his jacket and handed it to me.

"Adieu!"

Paolo shot his arms through the holes of his sweater.

"Oi, maid-servant! I'm going out for a bit of fresh air by the Bay!"

Minutes later, by the Bay...

Paolo sniffed in the fresh air (no, really, there was fresh air by the Bay) and stuffed his hands into his pockets coolly. He then saw four men sitting on some cardboard boxes around a makeshift table. He approached them cautiously and watched them play cards.

"--and double the rent!" yelled one of them joyously.

The other three men groaned and handed over multi-colored cards to the man.

Another man drew two cards and looked thoughtfully at them. He placed two cards of the same color on top of a card on his side of the table that had the same color. And he placed down one card.

"Sly deal," he muttered seriously, pointing over to another man's blue card. He took the blue card and placed it on top of his. He threw the rest of his cards down and shouted, "Yes!"

The others groaned some more and also threw their cards down. The man who shuffled the cards looked up and saw Paolo standing there.

"Ei, you? Wanna play?"

Paolo's eyes darkened. He looked over to the Bay.

"Do I wanna play...?" he muttered darkly.

It was the year 2011, and the rain was pounding against the window. Paolo was cleaning out his bag when he heard something heavy and thick drop. He bent down to pick it up and saw that it was the Php 300-something worth deck of Monopoly Deal he had bought with Ashley earlier that day.

For the next ten weeks, Paolo did nothing but play Monopoly Deal. He challenged everyone he met, even if it took having to explain the game for thirty minutes. He would explain, then challenge, and beat the crap out of them sunnuvabeeshes. He grew obsessed. Day and night, Monopoly Deal. Day and night, beating the crap out of everyone.

Until one day...

"Oh there it is!" Ashley exclaimed as she took a seat in front of Paolo months later at the JSEC in the University campus. "Wanna play a quick round before we eat?"

Paolo's eye glinted. "Sure..."

After about seven minutes--

"Ohh yeah! I win!" Ashley placed a Wild Card on top of her Boardwalk. She sighed. "That was good, I'm gonna go order..." She stood up and walked off to one of the stalls.

Paolo sat there... staring... After ten weeks... to be crushed... ten weeks...

It's been over a month now.

"You asking me... if I want to play...?" his voice shook.

The four men looked up. "Oh, sorry, bro. We already started, you took like so long to answer us. You can catch the next game."

"Bunch of hobos," muttered Paolo.

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WILL ASHLEY EVER LEARN THE SECRET BEHIND 'ASTRONOMER' AND 'ASTROLOGIST'?!

WILL ARCHIMEDES EVER FORGIVE PAOLO FOR SAYING MATH HAS NO PURPOSE IN LIFE?!

WHO WILL ASHLEY CHOOSE?! SIGMUND FREUD--OR CARL JUNG?!

WILL PAOLO WIN HIS FIRST EVER MONOPOLY DEAL SINCE THE DAY ASHLEY CRUSHED HIM?!

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The Day I Tried To Run Away

Okay, this post doesn't really belong to the MAWB blog since it only involves me and not the entire Weird Bunch but heck, it's not like I'm gonna post this on my COLLEGE blog.
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When I was a kid I used to ride my scooter inside the house because it was fun, and walking was so ten years ago. As I grew up, riding my scooter eventually became rollerblading inside the house... and then to just plain walking since I got too tall--I used the word 'tall' instead of big because if I had said big then you'd get the image of a giant version if me wearing roller-blades inside a tiny house.. with my head pressing on the ceiling and everything...

Anyway, so I used to ride my scooter inside the house. One afternoon, I guess my dad was pretty pissed at something because, while scooting near a bed, I ran over a little flap of bed cover on the floor and, mind you, I rode my scooter OUTSIDE the house as well so it got kinda dirty, and my dad--unfortunately--was there to witness it being run over by the wheels of my scooter, and he suddenly blew up and scolded me and all that.

I'm not the type who talks back so I just sat on the bed, waiting for my dad to finish. After he left, it was my turn to feel pretty pissed. I practically didn't even stain the bed cover, I just ran over it. So, in my anger, I decided to run away from home.

I don't know if you still remember, but back in the old days, a recurring theme in TV shows and cartoons was a kid running away from home. The common image I get (I don't know if you get it, too) of someone running away is somebody carrying a stick and on the end of the stick is some sort of tied-up cloth holding their stuff. Well, I was more civilized than that, I grabbed my backpack.

The house was kinda busy, I think, because nobody noticed me grabbing a whole loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. I also grabbed about two shirts, and my Pokemon Pokeball game thingy. In hindsight, yes, it wasn't a well thought-out plan. I would starve in about four days, if I didn't die of thirst first. I would have no shelter. I would have no place to bathe. I had brought what little money a kid like me would have at my age then (a few P20 bills and a bunch of coins). I was too young to have a phone, so I had no way of communicating with anyone if ever I DID run away. I also didn't pack any underwear.

But not to worry because I didn't get that far, seriously. The farthest I'd reached was the clubhouse. And that is NOT far from my house. You could get there in less than a minute if you ran, and probably exactly a minute if you walked casually--and I rode my scooter so, doing the math, it'd take me at most 20 seconds to get there. Upon arrival, I sat on the cement sidewalk and played with my Pokemon Pokeball game thing.

I'll explain the Pokemon Pokeball game thing now. Well, it's this huge Pokeball, about five inches in diameter. You open it up and there's a screen on the upper half and a bunch of tiny red circle-lights on the bottom half. I don't quite remember the objective of that game, but I think it involved tilting the Pokeball at various angles. This theory could be incorrect since I doubt the tilting technology we have today as seen on iPods was not invented yet back in the early 2000's. It could just have been my childlike imagination doing the tilting...

So I sat on the sidewalk playing my Pokeball for a mere few seconds when I thought of making a peanut butter sandwich. I was stumped because I hadn't thought about bringing a spoon. That was PROBABLY what made me take the twenty-second scoot back home.

My runaway was so epically short that nobody noticed that I had even gone outside. That may be seen as a bad thing... but I dunno. By then my dad had forgotten about my scooter thing. So I lay on my bed and continued playing with my Pokeball.

So the moral of the story is something like this: don't rush into things. Think about what you're doing and why you're doing it before you grab a loaf of bread and head out the door. The reason for my runaway was because my dad got angry at me for doing something every kid will do once in his or her life anyway. And I didn't really think about the future when I decided to run away. I actually thought of going to my cousin's house in the other subdivision, but having never walked out of my subdivision before, it was likely that I wouldn't do it then. I was REALLY young. Old enough to remember, but still young. I couldn't have been older than 7. Maybe I was 6...

Insights

It's PROBABLY not a good idea for me to be out so late since I have a dentist appointment at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning. But meh, whatever.

So here are some excerpts from the literature of my brain. These were take on different occasions and may not be in chronological order.

Weird dream. I was getting read to have a wizard duel with Voldemort, but Liv Tyler and Paolo were there. Our wands go all mixed up so we were testing them using Wingardium Leviosa. Then everyone started coming to watch and I said, "How are we supposed to have a fight here if you're all watching?!" then suddenly I'm outside at a party-like event. Paolo and I went to this glass tunnel with a metal sort of catwalk. Ida (Timbol) and her sister were there and I tripped and landed on the glass and we were laughing because we imagined what it would be like if it weren't made of glass. Then Paolo and I lay on our backs and started sliding down the tunnel, but the tunnel started to break, and then it was game over.

One of the reasons why this dream was weird was because of the randomness of the characters. For one thing, why would Liv Tyler be in a dream about Harry Potter? Sure, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are equally epic (in terms of reading material), but really... and my old classmate, Ida Timbol who I have not seen in a very long time, much less her SISTER.

An explanation for my obvious detachment from my block would be the notion that I am currently "screening" them, so far I have found nobody worthy of the relationship I currently have with my close friends.

In hindsight, I think I may have sounded anti-social. Well, that's true anyway. I didn't 'feel' my blockmates. But now I'm beginning to understand the current social situation that has developed between us 30 students. But that story is for another time.

Oh, this next one comes from Matteo Ricci... (not the person)

I was sitting on one of the individual study desks, looking at the computers (turned-off), when my mind wandered to laptops. I remember my brother telling me that his friend Adrian's laptop was stolen in the Ateneo campus. I'm starting to think that it wasn't as much "stolen" as it was "lost" because from what I see, Ateneans are very nice people with a good sense of what's right or wrong, I really doubt anyone--or at least, any TRUE Atenean--would steal.

So then I got to thinking, are these people really as good as I set them up in my mind to be? And then I remembered the desks at Bellarmine Hall. Seriously, there cannot be one classroom there that doesn't have a drawing of a penis etched forever to the desk. It's insane.

Another Dream Log

Okay, I may have to put up a new blog all about my dreams... although this one wasn't as freaky as the other one.

This dream I had was freaky in a different way, I guess.. or maybe the same. You be the judge.

First of all, the setting, I believe, was in UST. But it didn't really SEEM like UST because there were tall skyscrapers all around, and it seemed a lot bigger and of higher class than UST (no offense).

Well, anyway, I think we were there (by we I mean my family minus the two elder ones) because my parents had some business things to discuss (why with UST I had no idea). While we were waiting--or I guess my brother and I were waiting because my parents had suddenly disappeared--by brother pointed out the skyscrapers to me. I vaguely remember only two: one of them was fantastically tall, I couldn't see the top of it anymore because it reached past the clouds already, and the other was a slanted building, kinda like the leaning tower of Pisa but judging from what I learned in Physics, this building would not have stood.

My parents came back, disappointed. Something about it being "closed". So it was kinda a waste of travel time. We were on our way back to the car, we were passing through this tunnel-like walkway (which I am sure they have no such thing at UST) and through the windows we could see the trees. We were almost as tall as they were. Then this is where the weird part comes in.

My mom was suddenly freaked out by the trees, she started yelling out stuff like, "Oh my God, look at the trees! Look what's happened to them!" and my brother looked and he freaked out, too. Suddenly everyone around us was freaking out, talking about the trees and some sort of virus they must have acquired. By the sound of their voice, I guess the trees were totally gross and totally devastating to look at.

I didn't look at them though. My mind started imagining, based on what everybody was yelling out, what the trees could possibly look like. I heard one say that it's fruit turned... green? And mushy and gross. So I imagined a tree with its fruit, bleeding green pus. It seems very comical, doesn't it? But somehow it creeped me out!

I was brisk walking to get as far away from that place as possible. People around me were either vomiting or retching.. it was a really big deal about these trees.

So I went to the car and got in, after a few minutes my dad and my brother got in too but my mom wasn't there yet so we went to pick her up.

Suddenly I was in a a corn field. They were dragging a woman who looked a lot like Sandra Oh (haha this is kinda funny) through the corn. She looked deranged. She looked like she had just vomited, her eyes were wide and teary, and her mouth was open.

That's the end of that freaky dream.

That Freaky Dream I Had

Okay, it is like, almost 9PM and I don't have time to type up the entire dream so, just in case I forget it by tomorrow, I will write a brief summary of what happened.

It started off I was invited to Romar's birthday party.

Turns out his house was incredibly huge.

He invited me to play PS3 in his PS3 room, it was at the very top of the "mansion". It was a square, glass room with a flat-screen TV and a PS3, a bed, and a sofa at the foot of the bed.

I was about to play when Justin came in and took over the steering wheel (literally).

The room grew wheels and we started rolling down Romar's roofs.

We were going really fast so when I passed Alex in her white van, I waved.

We broke down at an intersection.

We hitched a ride with a jeep full of Koreans (not being racist here).

I couldn't fit so I wrote in a tricycle with a middle-aged Korean woman.

We were going to a theme park and decided to take a shortcut through a yellow and gray mall.

On the 3rd floor, Imma complained about a shop that asked her to be a model and ripped her off.

We decided to get back at them. While I abused (not THAT way) the blonde store manager with dwarfism, Imma wrecked the clothes in her store.

She caught us and set security on us.

This is where the thrilling, heart-pounding chase began.

We started running all around the mall.

At one point, when I reached the bottom of the escalator, there were 4 security people waiting for me with their arms open.

I found myself holding 4 hangers so I ninja-threw them and knocked them out. (But what actually happened, I remember, is I threw them and they just caught it and looked confused, I gave them a thumbs up, smiled and said "Good catch!" and ran as quickly as I could)

We somehow managed to split up in the commotion.

I was surrounded in the dep't store and I thought to myself, "This is over, I'm dead." but instead I jumped over a white shelf and ran up the escalator.

On the next floor, I was lucky. It was deserted, except for one guy who didn't know what was going on. He was rearranging the books on the shelf.

I knocked him out and took his clothes to blend in.

I decided to take the elevator used by the staff, just in case there were guards guarding the ones for customers.

When I reached the elevator, I caught up with the others.

They, too, were wearing security outfits.

There were 2 elevators, one filled with workers who still didn't know what was going on, and another filled with children.

I told them to take the one filled with children.

Inside the elevator, to act casual, I started making fun of CJ by saying "CJ!".

I was panicking, I didn't know which floor to go to and every second we wasted gave us a higher chance of getting caught. I didn't know what would happen to us if we were caught but I was really scared of it.

I asked, "What floor?! WHAT FLOOR?!" because I wasn't sure whether Paolo parked the car on the roof top or on basement 1 or 2.

Paolo said Basement 2 so I pressed the button.

After a while, I noticed we weren't moving and the others were yelling at me "What's wrong with you?! Why don't you move the elevator?!?!"

And I realized you had to turn a knob up and down for the elevator to go up or down.

My heart skipped a beat, what if they noticed the elevator wasn't moving and suspected we were in it?

So as fast as I could I pushed the knob down.

When we reached the bottom, it was broad daylight and there weren't much people around, just some construction workers.

I turned to Paolo and asked desperately "Where did you park the car!?!"

He said he didn't remember, so we looked around for a while.

Fearing we were wasting time, I told him to just risk it and ask the construction workers.

They said he parked the car just past this store selling something, I'm not sure if it was Chicharon or Takuyaki balls.

We were walking around, looking for the car (in my mind, it was my car, a red CR-V).

I could tell we were wasting a lot of time, my heart started pounding again.

Suddenly, I noticed that everyone was looking at us all weird.

My heart doubled its pace.

Then a lady to my left took her phone out and took a picture of me.

That's when I knew.

"They know." I thought to myself.

I turned around, I felt sick. I told Paolo, "We have to go, hurry! Forget about the car!"

We started to walk but then someone pointed at us. My heart froze.

"Martin worshippers."

I stared at him. Soon everybody else's hands were pointing at us.

"Martin worshippers!"

I was afraid their weirdness would attract the guards and we would get caught.

"Martin worshippers!"

It was totally scary.

And so I woke up.

Okay, I guess I did have time to type it all up but I'm gonna make it spookier next time.

I bet you're wondering how I got rain into Sims 2 even though I don't have Seasons or something..