My Comfort Zone

Thanks to my lovely beau, he got me a Stylus for my 25th birthday, which was something I had always dreamt about but couldn’t purchase because all my money had gone to the milky white Lifebook. Now, completed with an L-shaped desk and customized pull-out drawer, I got a lovely working setup which makes me feel comfortable enough to sit for hours – either writing, drawing or designing. When we purchased the desk, my beau got the drawer fixed a bit further out so that the stylus pad would fit. He even swapped his computer chair which he purchased from Index because my one was a lazy chair that was meant to be for reading a thick novel in a rainy day, instead of the one that could swivel around or level up and down.

The lazy chair, unfortunately, ended up as a permanent parking spot for all my soft toys which he gave me. And just to make you feel even more sick, we got names for each one of them. The big one who looks like a deformed Golden Retriever is Ramon, the Snoopy-looking one is called -durr!- Snoopy, the Forever Friends bear is Toffee (because that’s his official name) and the yellow fluffy thing that looks like an upside-down amputated duck is called Fluffy.

Below is where all my shit goes – which is books and CDs and DVDs and of course my own Entertainment Spot which consists of a small television, a kick-ass unknown brand of a DVD player (also from him), a hand-me-down stereo that hooks up to the TV for that ultimate Dolby Surround Sound experience. Yeah.

The Entertainment Spot is placed right in front of my double bed so it’s really nice to just hang out in there while absent-mindedly flicking on the remote controls. I’ve got about four of them now – A DVD player one, a stereo one, a TV one and last but not least, an Air Conditioner one. Probably need to get one of those universal remote control yoke, since it gets a bit of a tackle when I’ve only got the night light on.

Just in case you’re wondering where my dog at, I move his crate around whenever I feel like it. He usually resides right next to my desk, but when he gets cold and shivery from the AC, I move him further away from it, right next to the CD rack.

Well, needless to say, my room is the most comfortable place in the whole world. No matter where I’ve been, it’s the one place you can’t compete with. Room sweet room, I say.

Calling In Sick

I’d called in sick today and I slept in until ten – which was pretty shameful considering my best reputation as an eighteen-hour sleeper. I actually prided myself on that fact. It was the strangest feeling of all – as I kept sneaking a look at the digital clock on my stereo and realized that it was only ten and thus I decided to finish off ‘Anyone Out There’, my latest purchase novel from Marian Keyes, my favorite author.

Though drowned in the fictional heaven as I was, I couldn’t help thinking that if I went to work today, around this time of the day I would be swamped with specifications to make or proof prints to check, and daily report to be filled in, clicking away on my computer, mails swarming in all the time to my inbox, Corel Draw keep doing the recovery wizard thing every three hours or so because my computer has shameful standard specs and various Open-sourced programs all opened (can you imagine how stingy big corporate companies have become that they actually force their employees to use free cacky open-sourced data processing programs that keep fucking up instead of nice, versatile Microsoft ones?), clothed in my recently replaced black-area uniform which felt a bit stiff and smelt weird, complete with rubber-soled shoes and head covering. Working in that R&D department made it ten times more isolated as it was located in a covered-up level of the building in which no one would have guessed it was in there – aside from the fact that you had to change clothes and shoes before you went inside.

As agonizing as it was, the day goes so eerily slowly when I’m not at work, even though it should have been the exact opposite. I should have been happy staying at home, reading my books and not worrying about work but it kind of pissed me off knowing that I was still thinking about it, somewhere at the back of my messy, bed-headed head. Work has become something bigger than it used to be. Now I have much more responsibility, as it is no surprise, probably because I’ve been there for over a year, and so work projects gradually built up and I got to do more challenging things like designing and creating a manual for a new packaging look and a corporate logo for the new bimolecular laboratories center about to set in August.

But it wasn’t just that – a lot of things were depended on me, and a day’s off from work makes a lot of difference and that was not all, as there were bitchy senior staffs to deal with and ditzy blabber mouthed managers to put a lot of patience in to prevent me from clobbing their heads over with a legal-sized Bantex. If you have seen Dilbert, trust me, all of it is true. All of it – the characters, the crazy corporate policies, the spying of employees’ activities and the disgusting ways corporate companies think of to increase even more profit and decrease more salary. As outrageous as they are, the caricature seem to have nailed down my office environment down to the nearest zero.

So every month or so, whenever I get lucky, I have the reason to call in sick. No, I really am sick. My body hurts and my nerves are shot to shit – it’s probably due to the fact that I’ve been taking home work and continuing until almost midnight and the weather’s all weird and improper; heavy rain in the middle of sunny June? I’m starting to think that this whole global warming thing is closer than we all think.

But time slowing down is probably not the only reason why I keep sneaking a look at the clock – I miss my man badly and I can’t wait for him to get home. And it’s not because – well, not only – he offered earlier on the phone to get me anything from the shops (‘Snacks? or perhaps pizza for dinner? You need to eat a lot to get well soon’).

When time sets still and I feel blissfully content just lying around the couch with a thick novel at hand, I feel like I should have been doing this with my boyfriend too.

I can just imagine him at work, briefing his assistants to analyze chemical stuff and creating protocols (God knows what they are, he’s way too smart for me), feeling bored as hell because he has no one to chat to on the instant messenger (because I’m not at work) and always finishing work before lunch time, and especially during lunch time when we would march down the canteen together and sat across each other, just talking and discussing about things (mostly design stuff).

It’s raining heavily, and I bet if anything, that traffic back from work to here will be hell, and that just prolongs the time that I’m not with him. And just as I’m writing this, I hear the gate clanking open. Joy leaps up from inside and instinctively I know – he’s home.

And I feel a lot better already.

My Day

Today, on the day I turned twenty-five, I celebrated it in a most extraordinary way I’ve ever known.

In the morning, as usual we said our prayers in the car before we left for work, but then he reached out to the back seat and pulled out something rectangular in a brown envelope. Curious and excited with a little bit of sleepiness from the weekend still lingering about, I took the thing out of its envelope.

It was a small album, with navy blue canvas covering, and inside were illustrations made out digitally and printed on photo paper, with beautiful words I’d known so well but still made me swoon upon hearing them – his feelings for me pouring out from those pages, all twenty-five of them.

I loved it instantly and swore I’d keep it in tact and that if anyone wanted to see it they’d probably had to put on sterile gloves before touching it. The whole day I was glowing with warm feeling, itchy to take the album out and go through the pages again but worried that friends from work might want to see. I just couldn’t wait until I got home so that I could look through it again. And again. And again. And again.
He already booked us for dinner in the evening, and as we got there, ordered our food and all, he told me to wait there because he had to go somewhere and my nerves were killing me because he wouldn’t tell me where. He seriously wouldn’t have gotten me another present? Or could it be…

When he came back in less than five minutes later (I think), he told me he had something to say. I turned to him. He said Happy Birthday. I was glowing yet again. Mid-glowing, a Happy Birthday tune started playing in the background. The waiters and waitresses were heading towards our table and one of them was carrying a big chocolate cake with candles on them. I couldn’t believe any of it. I felt like I was in the movies or something.

Yes, believe it or not, no one has ever done that kind of stuff to me before. Not even my closest people. So they were singing. He was singing. I was red with joy and embarrassment. And happiness. I told him I was officially the happiest woman in the world. We enjoyed our dinner while chatting at the same time, reminiscing and doing flashbacks of the first time we started to get to know each other. It was hard to believe that it was only six months ago when it felt like six years.

It was as if we’d known each other for longer than that in such a short period of time. The food was spectacular, and he spoon-fed me the chocolate cake – which was spooky in a way, because while we were ordering before, I was thinking how nice would it be if they also had some chocolate cakes on the menu – which they didn’t. Weirdly enough, I didn’t say anything until the whole thing happened and I just remembered it all again.

And that was not all. He’d already prepared something else for me long before my birthday was due – something that I’d been wanting for as long as I could remember.

Today, I felt sincerely, mind-blowingly happy. I really couldn’t remember the last time I was treated so special and I just realized that no one has ever had. All the previous birthdays were usually celebrated staying at home, receiving congratulatory messages from various people while I had my dinner and watched TV as usual. We had family dinner but that was usually done at the end of the months because it was my grandfather’s birthday as well and we usually just compacted all birthdays that were in the same month as one.

Yes, that’s my family for you. But today, it was about me. Just me. And I was having it with the most beautiful person in the world. My hunny, who rocks my world in the most unexpected ways and still does up until this minute.

I love you.

Lazy Sunday

Sounds like a typical jazz compilation music album I’ve seen so much lately at the record store, but I simply can’t find a better suited title for this yet.

Though there had been so many lazy Sundays before, this Sunday has made its way to the best Sunday so far. What lies ahead, I cannot tell. After going through some rough couple of weeks, I managed to get out of it alive.

It feels ages since that day, and I kept thinking about what Carrie from SATC said when Miranda asked her the question that any woman who’d gone through it would be asked, in which she said,” Any day now.”

I couldn’t understand it before but now I get it.

Like a distant, black memories in life that I wished could’ve been erased, I still thought of it now and then, and when I compare it to the state of condition I’m in right now, I feel so relieved.

The day after that, I went back to work as usual, but I remembered that I felt different. I felt that I was given a second chance to fix my life again, as if God was saying to me, wagging his forefinger and all, “Don’t screw it all up again now.”

And I thought this kind of Sunday, this kind of lazying around, not doing anything particular whatsoever, would never come again. I thought my life was over. I thought I was doomed from freedom and dreams, of having the chances to seize some of what’s still left in my life’s to-do list.

So I breathe in to this Sunday, I enjoy this last day of the week that is really intended for resting, the day in which I can finally be able to rest and relax again. I feel like I had just been rescued from a tragic accident and now I’m recuperating from the trauma.

Sitting in the living room, my laptop in front of me, with so many books to read and CDs to listen to, some barking every now and then from our three-months old puppy who looks absolutely dazzling now and naughty as hell (If I might add), the warm, breezy afternoon wind seeping from the back garden, and most of it all, the person who’ve stayed with me through it all from the lowest to the highest sitting right beside me – I feel nothing else could have replaced this day.

And I thank God for this day to be given back to me.

Foolish And Stupid

They thought of us
Ever since that night we spent a few precious hours
Where we were ourselves for the entire time we were together
Where we didn’t have to pretend, nor act to please each other
Or trying to make each other feel comfortable
Where we felt like we had known each other for ages
And that night we were just like old acquaintances who just had a chance to reunite

Ever since
I was never the same
My world was turned upside down
Jack Johnson sang, “Is this how it’s supposed to be?”
Well I didn’t know any other way it should be
All I knew was that I felt alive
More alive than I had ever been in a very long time

Like I was able to breathe again
Like I was able to be myself again
Like I was living for something bigger than life itself
Living each day as if it was my last
Breathing each breath as if the oxygen was not free of charge
Walking each steps as if walking on air

I knew of miracles
And for those who didn’t believe in them
I say, “You should, because it happened to me.”
One miracle that changed my life
One miracle that started off the others
And it all happened because we dared

To be thought foolish and stupid
To be thought different and strange
To be thought helplessly romantic and shameless

And I no longer cared
What others thought of me
What others thought of us
None of it really matters

All I know is that you’re made for me and I for you
And that’s enough for me to know
That I finally find my place in this world
That I finally belong
That I finally find my path
And how beautiful it is from here

The bigger picture
The final destination
Because you’re here. With me. Forever.