I HAVE A STUPID CASE OF FML THIS WEEK.

March 12, 2010 at 3:03 pm | Filed under bitchin' a ride, camwhorage

1)

I noticed my purple loafers felt a little weird while I was on my way to work today. I paused to check it out and noticed that the stupid kitten heel (I hate kitten heels, I tell you) on the left pair was slowly detaching itself from the rest of the sole. I wasn’t anywhere near the office yet (I was actually walking through Gateway Mall to get from one train station to another, heh) so I dropped by a hardware store to buy some contact cement. I silently told my shoes to keep its shit together until I get to the office so I could do the necessary quick fix.

Fortunately, it did. Of course, as soon as I sat down to check out the heel, it completely broke off. As if that wasn’t enough, the right pair’s heel started getting all wiggly like a loose tooth, too.

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PET PEEVES, PART 2.

February 25, 2010 at 9:35 pm | Filed under bitchin' a ride, lists

Thanks to the recently resurrected Man Blog Forums, I realized that I have a good number of pet peeves. I made a short list some time ago and I guess there’s a burning need to make another one. This one’s a bit longer, a compilation of my replies to a thread of the same topic over at the forums.

I don’t like it when ugly people flirt.
I am somewhat lookist and I will not apologize for it.

Girls with mustaches.
So many Filipinas have such grizzly mouths and it bothers me that it doesn’t bother them! I’ve always been a bit of a hairy girl and prior to getting myself a facial epilator (one of the best things I’ve ever bought), I would painfully pluck at the little bits of fuzz. There are several parts of a woman’s body that I believe needs to be free of hair: armpits, toes, knuckles, and upper lip (I shave my legs on weekends when I wear skirts/shorts and I will not tell you what I do with my ~*~downthere~*~).

Girls whose lipstick/lip color doesn’t match the rest of their face/their skin tone.
There was this one girl on the train who looked at me in disdain and moved away when I coughed lightly into my handkerchief (my mouth was dry and I accidentally sucked in some air). I looked back at her, saw how her gaudy metallic ocher (good lord) lipstick clashed with her skin color, and sort of just curled my lip.

Yeah, I was just kind of offended, heh.

Co-workers who stare.
When strangers stare, it’s kind of annoying (flattering, if the person is cute) but it’s easy to shrug off since they’re strangers, after all, and not someone you run into everyday. When it’s a co-worker, it’s just really rude and uncomfortable.

People who lean their backs on the train’s metal poles.
Does that pole look like your own personal backrest??? Other people need something to hold on to.

When people call me “Helgs”.
Said out loud: my name has a measly two syllables, don’t be lazy.
When typed: my name has five letters, Helgs has five letters; the A key is right beside the S key. It’s really easy.

Improper pluralization (i.e. informations, homeworks, stuffs).

People calling me “sis”.
I never really got the whole “sis” thing. Unless we really are sisters, don’t.

Motorists who don’t slow down/stop or worse, speed up when approaching pedestrian lanes.
These people need to GTFO the roads.

People who say “I love you” to everyone and all the time.
Insincere/fake compliments/flattery.
“I barely know you but I think you’re amazing and really pretty and terrific and I want to be ~*~your friend~*~ and haha, look at you in this photo, you look so funny and kind of fat! Let me give you a site about fat burner advice because you clearly need it! Hahaha, you know I’m just kidding! I love you!”

Clingy girls who play games with their boyfriends for attention.
I’d like to think that the person you supposedly love deserves a more mature approach than that.

When people introduce themselves with useless crap.
This used to weird me out while I was still in college and when I first started working my two call center jobs. We know how it goes: it’s the first day of classes/training and no one knows anyone. One by one, you introduce yourself and I swear, people come up with the dumbest things to say.

“I’m Herguh and I’m 24 and I like the color pink a lot. Spongebob Squarepants is my favorite cartoon character because I also like the color yellow and I like Channel 2 better than Channel 7. My favorite radio station is that station that most cabbies listen to. Again, my favorite color is pink. This defines me as a person.”

Another example that Ade gave:

“I’m 20% Filipino, 30% Cuban, 15% New Yorker, 5% Nigerian, and 30% Russian.”

Ridiculous.

(Admittedly, I used to do that whole I’m this, this, and this crap, chiefly to explain my very un-Filipino surname. I don’t really care nowadays. “Why’s your last name like that?” “Oh, it’s German.” “You don’t look German.” “Yeah, I don’t.”)

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FILIPINOS NEED TO BE INJECTED WITH UPPERS DURING THE EVENING UNRUSH* HOUR.

November 21, 2008 at 1:53 pm | Filed under bitchin' a ride, urban primadonna

You’d think that when you’ve been taking the same route home at the same time every evening for the past two or three weeks, you’d get the hang of things and fall into a somewhat convenient routine and expect things to be the same (with the exception of rain or some other event that brings out the stupid in everyone, like I don’t know, more rain) for forever, right?

Not really.

Last night, I left work at the usual time: 9:05ish pm. The walk from my building along Emerald Avenue to the front of Galleria (the side facing EDSA) was uneventful and normal. I smoked one cigarette, zipped past people, and arrived at the bus stop only slightly sweaty with Kat DeLuna yelling into my ears. And then I noticed something unusual: a crowd of people waiting for buses that weren’t there. It wasn’t raining. Previous nights, bus conductors had to practically beg for me to choose and get on their bus. Tonight, there were no men in yellowed white polos screaming CUBAO IBABAW! LETRE! FAIRVIEW! MALANDAY! while waving signs at me.

Weird.

I took off my hoodie and stuffed it in my bag, took out another cigarette, and weighed my options: wait for a bus or walk along EDSA to the Ortigas MRT station? I peeked down the bus stop lane and saw ONE BUS and about ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE frantically trying to board it. I exaggerate the number of people, yes, but that scene alone made me decide to take the metro. Or the train, as non-pretentious Filipinos (aka not me lol) call it.

Making it past the bus stop lane alone was a challenge. Because Filipinos have this incomprehensible tendency to block the way and hassle everyone around them, I had to elbow my way through people (also: I had put out my cigarette before doing so because I am a considerate person who isn’t the kind to blow smoke directly into people’s faces. I help old folks cross the street and open doors for women, too). Once I got past that, I then had to deal with throngs of people who had the same destination as I. Lemme change that: throngs of people who had the same destination as I, walking ever so sloooooooooooowly, ambling along the very polluted EDSA like they were having a Sunday stroll at the park…which is actually an odd thing to say, as I know no Filipinos who take Sunday strolls at the park. I mean, in my 23 years here, I have yet to do that. Maybe a Saturday or a Sunday picnic at Sunken Garden (which, by the way, needs a Wikipedia entry), yes. But a Sunken Garden Sunday stroll? LOL.

So there I was, willing my feet to match their pace while I waited for the perfect opportunity to overtake the slowpokes who seemed to enjoy breathing in the vehicular exhaust. I thought I had gotten my chance when there were no people coming from the opposite direction so I switched to the left lane, quickened my step and BAM! The dude in front of me who wasn’t exactly Speedy Gonzales switched to the left lane, too. Did he speed up? Of course, not.

I wanted to slap the back of his head.

Whenever I find myself having to deal with the (public transportation-taking) Filipino masses, I always have this scene playing in my mind: basically, I am Helga and I am in a rush to get somewhere and all these people are in my way and I need to pee real bad and I am angry and so I bust out a Barbie-pink armalite and open fire and everyone turns into fuzzy pink puffballs of lint.

Yo. How’s the job search going? HUHLOLZ.

*Or as Dante suggested: settling-in-at-your-preferred-drinking-spot hour.

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SO THERE’S THIS SLEAZEBAG…

July 14, 2008 at 2:51 pm | Filed under bitchin' a ride

O hai, I has kweschun: What would you do if you woke up one early morning and you realize that the guy sleeping beside you (who is not your boyfriend or anyone you’re dating, for that matter) was rubbing your right nipple?

YOU MAKE KITTY SCARED (READING REVIEWS ON ALLI)

First, I pushed his hand away (hindsight tells me I should’ve gotten up and punched him in the face). Then I turned my back on him. I was scared and I wanted to cry (this was my same reaction when, months ago on my way to school, the dude seated to my left in the FX lightly touched my left boob). Anger came a short while later. I had to endure several hours of being two inches away from the sleazebag, all the while I was thinking: “do I let this pass? Do I pretend nothing happened?” Backtrack to a couple of months or so ago when this same dude was trying to hug me in my sleep. I had pushed him away, too, yet said nothing the next morning. Obviously, somebody needs to learn a lesson and keep his hands to himself. When I finally woke up and was lucid, I was in a sour mood and ready to shank a bitch.

It takes a lot to anger me. Sure, I am easily rattled and it doesn’t take much provocation to send me into a verbal frenzy of cursing, but I hardly ever resort to violence. Not even that time when I was pinned up against a metal railing by a guy who then proceeded to grind his crotch up my ass, or when this tricycle driver held my hand when I gave him my fare. This was too much, though, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, think of any other way to deal with what had happened.

I caught him unaware, like he did me. He was sleeping when I smacked him several times. With a shoe.

I smacked him so hard (at least I’d like to think so) that the shoe flew off my hand and landed several feet away.

Is that how you get your jollies, asshole? Obviously, you fail with fully-conscious women, so you choose to have a go at them while they’re asleep and, to a certain extent, defenseless. You better pray I don’t ever see you again. Just so you know, my knee? It has an appointment with your ‘nads. And just like the last time, I’m going to make sure you didn’t see it coming.

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HALPZ, I’M STUCK IN WWW CIRCA 2003!

April 25, 2008 at 12:34 pm | Filed under art & design, bitchin' a ride

Day 2 of Dreamweaver class and this is what we’re doing:

Tables.

Now I have nothing against tables. In fact, I love tables. They’re nice to put things on and though it’s been proven that they’re not needed to properly eat a meal (because under certain circumstances— say, when you find yourself in a remote island with no electricity, no running water, and no cellular reception— your lap, one of your hands or any steady surface would do), they still make things a hell lot easier.

But seriously, who still uses tables in webdesign? And why does this goddamn school feel the need to devote four precious hours to this outdated bullshit? When we could be spending our time learning something relevant, like, I don’t know, Flash pre-loaders? CSS sprites? CSS-based navigations? Global warming? The plight of drunken elephants in India??? ANYTHING but goddamn tables!

I’ve just been PWOT-ed. I half-expected our instructor to tell us to incorporate glitter graphics and animated butterfly gifs into the site we made today.

You know what I need to do? Buy memory for my laptop.

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