Moon River

#123: My Huckleberry Friend

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

Working Stylistics

#122: Maximum Overdrive

I took this test which defines your Working Style for you by measuring Characteristic Behavior, Emotional Expression, Assertiveness, Preferred Orientation and Pace. Here's what it churned out from my answers:

Working Style: DRIVER
Characteristic Behaviors: Dominant, Demander, Commander


Goal and results-oriented
Impatient
Risk-taker
Task-oriented
High Achiever
Workaholic
Decisive
Intense
Opinionated
Stubborn
Blunt
Practical
Tough
Firm in Relationships
Control-Oriented
Competitive
Loves Challenges
Makes Direct Eye Contact

Those in businesses impacted by rapid growth, change or crisis often display the Driver's lead from the front behavior. They want employees who posses a high level of efficiency and ability, who work well independently and are responsive to quick turn-around assignments.

Drivers' Most Effective Environment:
Drivers enjoy variety and an environment that is constantly changing. They want surroundings where they have authority, increasing responsibilities and lucrative financial incentives. They need resources that support their practical, task-oriented and risk-taking orientation.

Drivers' Least Effective Environment:
Drivers have difficulty in an environment where it is decision-making by consensus. They need autonomy, dislike close supervision and have limited tolerance and patience with colleagues and processes that don't meet their criterion.

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Except for the "makes direct eye contact" bit - which I do when I'm trying to sell an idea but not when it's a normal conversation, the results are fairly precise. More reason for me to be scared of me.

Hmm.

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall

#121: Who's the Scariest of them all?

The thing that scares me about some people is that they are me,
with the sides I dislike, magnified.
Caricatures.
Derivatives.
Distortions.
These, I avoid.
Only to look in the mirror and see what I'm really running away from.

R.I.P.

#120: Ripped in Pieces

I heard a crunching sound as I parked the car. Schweppes. It was the front skirt of the car grinding on those yellow Toblerones they put on each slot to keep you from parking your car on the island or the planters - whichever suits your fancy. I hate those Toblerones. And I hate bringing this car. (Sure, it looks fabulous. I can actually hear neck bones crack as I whiz by. But that's not worth all the worry this car brings - kids scratching it, hitting some nasty pothole and getting knicks on the mags, running over a staple wire and slicing the paper-thin rubber they call wheels. Argh!) And so the one thing I don't worry about today (because I've already worried about it last night and I thought it was already over when I pulled out of the mall parking lot without a scratch), decides to happen. Just for fun, ya know.

So I back the car up and hear more grinding... and ripping of fiberglass or whatever it is they use for those skirts/bumpers (whatever.) Oh God. I don't deserve to drive this car. (My dad's going to tell me the same thing, I'm sure.)

This Chinese girl with very good fashion sense (nice purple heels) walks over to where I was kneeling and asks me what happened. How nice of her. I don't think I would've walked over to another person bawling over some car skirt. (Come on. You lower your car and put those impractical things. You probably deserve to get it ripped apart by some stray rock.) I mean, the Toblerone wasn't even stray and yet I had the mind to run over it. And while it was my brother who set up the car (as if it was only meant to live in showrooms and race tracks and not in the real world), I knew I deserved this.

So stylish Chinese girl suggests that I have the thing glued. (Got some Elmer's Glue on you?) "Then go shopping!" Uh-huh. "You go shopping, you come back, and it will still be there...so just be happy!" I loved her style and her concern but I didn't know whether to love her for the advice or just take her number and send it to some mental institution. Or maybe I should send my number instead.

Driving home, the road was full of nuts. A battered Kia cab had some wheel alignment problem and was moving sideways into my lane. No. Into the car I was driving! At the Skyway, running at 120kph, this Crosswind on my right side, decides to suddenly switch to my lane... while I was still very much using it. And while another vehicle was using the lane at my left. I cringed and waited for his bronze body paint to be united to my green body paint. That would've been the perfect ending to this day. The perfect ending for me... err, of me as well.

Ashes in the Rain

#119: One Smoky Night

A mixture of spit and ashes builds up in my throat. My hair drinks of the smell of burnt tobacco and a hazy film descends over my eyes. My lungs begin to falter. At least 8 sticks of second-hand smoke and I don't know whether to cringe, cough or cry. How can some people be so cruel?

I drive home under the heavy rain, half-blind, through dingy streets of old Manila. Motels outshout each other with glowing billboards that announce the price of morality. Which intersection will find me in this flashy car begging for my life from one who went too far in finding his family their next meal? I drive faster to shake away the thought. The next red light sends shivers up my spine as half-naked kids take turns scrubbing my window, my side mirror, my windshield while wildly knocking their coin cans against the car. I toss them a couple of coins. Not even enough to buy each of them a piece of bread but enough to make them detach themselves from the vehicle. How insensitive of me to think of scratches on the paint and the glass when I should've have thought first of the cold rain clawing on their bare backs and scrawny bodies. I let that sink in my head as I look for my next turn out of this place.

Hitting the highway, I let the car fly and send showers of dirty water spraying out of rain puddles. A couple of shadows skip across the road barely visible. I wince as I think of how easily I could've missed them - or hit them. Were they suicidal or does rain just do that to people?

My last intersection is in knots. At the center stands a traffic enforcer. No, a woman flailing her arms and drowning in lunatic laughter. Naked, she unabashedly faces truck headlights with her breasts. I drive off thinking of what drove her insane. Was it hunger? Was it the loss a loved one? A child? Her husband? Was it the rain? Or was it 8 sticks worth of sickening cigarette smoke?

Be Careful What You Ask For

#118: You Just Might Get It


"I want the truth!"
"You want the truth?? You can't handle the truth!"

And so I sit here wondering if I should have just yelled that line the way Jack Nicholson did. That's the problem with people asking for the truth. They're not always ready to handle it.

I have a friend who asked for the truth just recently and I, wanting to help, gave it to him in the most direct and detailed way possible. He reeled. Clutched his stomach. Curled. And rolled away like those armadillos when you kick them hard enough.

Of course I didn't kick this person. I felt I had poured in enough care and concern in my words but apparently those mean nothing in the light of truth that one is not ready to face. And so I let him go. I should have listened to my mother when she adviced me to stop trying to help a person who refuses to be helped.

Early today, my boss sent me a message setting a meeting at 9am tomorrow for a "talk." I had previously asked him what it was about but he didn't want to say anything. Oh boy. This won't be good. When I finally decided to answer his text 5 hours later, I challenged him to reveal the meeting agenda. "Let's talk on how we can work as a team. Think about it already so we can have a good and honest discussion."

Uhm. Yeah. Here's another request for honesty - misguided or otherwise. And I bet he won't be ready for a real honest discussion. Ready to talk, probably. Ready to listen, hmm... rather unlikely. In fact, that's the reason we haven't been able to work as a team in the past 9 months. But I don't know if he's ready to hear that. And I, on my end, have become wary of people asking for the truth. Maybe I should start practicing Jack Nicholson's booming delivery of that famous line instead.

"You want the truth??"
"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

Sis

#117: She Ain't Heavy...



See-saw from hearty laughters that leave you breathless, gasping for air, and then to heart-to-heart conversations about life that leave you taking deep breaths; just like we always do. Just like we've done countless times. And 13 years will yield no better fruit. She is a sister - if sisters can only be plucked at their teenage years from another mother's womb. No, more than that. She is an extension of who I am - from the days of bad hair to the days of bad-looking boys and bad bosses. She probably wonders as I wonder yet not with clear words speak. And so we celebrate with cackles where we are now while behind dry eyes, weep as we see where we'll be.

I will keep you forever.
And we will have dinner in New York.
Then spend a day or two in Prague.
I promise.

Walking on Cloud Nine

#116: Amongst Mango Trees


I'm floating on clouds and confetti now. And bathing on mango juice and mocha beats. I don't know how to describe my high. You just had to be there - all 4 events in all 4 different places with 4 different teams and 4 different kinds of equipment. They miraculously all worked. And based on the sales commitments made (signed in blood, of course. Okay, it was with your standard issue Pilot felt-tip pen, but signed, nonetheless) we're going to hit budget. And the high gets higher.

And now that they're all over and only the sound of congratulations remains, I am torn between celebrating this win by posting a riveting account and collapsing on my bed.

I'll just let these pictures paint the thousands of words I'm too lazy to write now. And while my boss failed to say "great job" again, countless people sure made up for it by throwing buckets of that this way.

One said, "The best and biggest thing done for this brand so far since its inception." Another said, "Ikaw ang bagong Eight O'Clock." When a brother approached me to say, "Galing mo talaga," I knew I had to give the glory to the one who truly deserves it instead of just saying my usual gracious thanks. "Praise God," I told him. "Praise God indeed," he responded.



Ketchup-Please: Partner-in-Crime for this Project


Lovely & Loyal Supporters


Smooth Operations with Outback Jack


Philippine Mango and Indian Mango


Sesame Street sang: "One of these things is not like the others..."


The Host and The Event Hostess

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

#115: Back From Murphy


I'm home - in more ways than one. And I'm happy.
This is the team that I love working with and this is the environment wherein I feel like my sizzling-crackling-popping self - wherein I feel comfortable revealing a dazzling side of me or two. (Well, at least that's what I think. That makes one. Plus maybe that guy who kept on smiling as I was presenting. Wearing green. Looking like an important dealer partner. But not.) Ketchup-Please looks at him and snorts, "He needs a facial."

I just got back from the first two (out of four) launch events for my brand's new product. The one yesterday was forgivable. It was the first run and we were all just seeing everything come together for the first time. (Plus, the new TV ad got a good reaction so that pretty much let's you gloss over the fact that the promised summer flags were tiny ignorable flaglets and the promised set design needed heavy doses of imagination. And perhaps some hallucinogens. Which I don't recommend.)

Today however was disastrous. The host didn't feel like following the script. She didn't seem to actually feel like following the job description of a host. The few times that she tried adlib-ing, she actually gave out wrong information, like telling the guests to go outside and get their food there even though a wonderful buffet spread awaited them INSIDE the venue. At the brink of a heart attack, I told her to go to the stage to say these lines (*me pointing to the exact portion of the event script she needed to follow - say, the introduction of the new product.) She instead takes the stage and proceeds to read a spiel from two pages back, from two bloody topics ago.

The usherettes also had a problem doing what they were hired to do. Instead of "ushering," I would always find them clumping together in their little group giggling about who-knows-what. (Please don't tell me they were talking about the "Usher" who dances and sings "Caught Up.") A couple of times, I actually wanted to kill someone. Anyone. Everyone. But then I remember that we prayed as a group before we started the event and I asked that the Lord be glorified even in this so I had to withdraw the blades from my knuckles (and hand them back to Wolverine.)

I think the agency hired aliens.

Those things aside, the events went fine in the sense that we got such warm reception from the audience, a good reaction to the programs and plans we presented, and ultimately, results in the form of mind-blowing orders for the new product. (I say mind-blowing because one area committed to delivering more than double of the national projections for this month.) Now our brains are shot to bits thinking of how to move heaven and earth to serve those orders. Ketchup-Please is stressed. Obi-Wan says it's a good problem. I say it's a problem alright. Why was the forecast so screwed up to begin with? Now I'm stressed.

Stressed but happy. Oh yeah. I already said I was happy. I don't know if it was because of the Krua Thai dinner we had the night before or the wonderful Vietnamese dinner we had last night (we had this unbelievable ground pork barbecue which was a cross between a Pampanga's best tocino and an Art Attack project + chicken with mangoes and cashews + caramel pork + pomelo salad + squid with pork and dark mushrooms. And I caught myself slamming the table a couple of times while laughing.)... or maybe because of all the things coming together for me even while things outside are falling apart (I promise I will not get that local event coordinator again.)... I just know I am.

How would you explain me giving Ketchup-Please an unexpected hug, or me buying 8kg of mangosteen before my flight for my 2-member family waiting back home, or me looking forward to x hours of travel tomorrow for another event where everything can (and probably will) go the complete opposite of how I originally envisioned it, totally sending me a couple of days closer to my death?

Maybe it was the lovely bed at Marco Polo hotel. Or travel. Or being away from Ratbert. Or lack of sleep. Or everything about the launch of Eight O'Clock Mango.