American Idol

Yes. I felt like one of the contestants for the American Idol as I sat inside the air conditioned room of the US embassy this afternoon. I was there at 11:00 am but my schedule for interview was at 12:15. I waited inside the anxiety-filled room starting 11:30 am. I was coughing due to the heat from outside. If overdosing yourself with lozenges could happen, I would have been so high by 1:30 because I've already taken like 6 candies so far. And only after 4 lozenges did I notice that it was indicated in the pack that I was supposed to take just one every 2 hours. Good thing I wasn't intoxicated when the first 221g applicant was called. A 221g is given to applicants who have applied yet their application was pending because the consul asked for a document or additional requirement.

The two-hour wait was spent coughing, spitting at the comfort room sink, taking a leak, trying to read my reviewer, praying the rosary and daydreaming of the first time I will see Cefie again in 3 months. At around 12, I thought that the interview will start at exactly 12:15. Well, I was wrong. I had to wait and at 1, I thought the interview will start by 1:15. I already calculated the number of people ahead of me and I talked to God. I said that I hope I will be done with the interview by around 2. When window 12 didn't open by 1:15, I was already so cumbersome. But I was still good natured. What we didn't know was that we will be called in different windows because whoever issued you the 221 g will be the one to interview you again. I didn't know what time I heard my name called at Window 2. And so I saw her again, the pretty young consul who gave me a pending approval. I gave her the letter, she opened it, then excused herself. While she was gone, I was so nervous, and so I started praying. That was when I noticed the clock. The clock struck 2:00 p.m. Somehow, I felt that God was telling me something. The consul went back, asked me one question about my documents, and I answered with one sentence. She asked me to show her my documents and after a few seconds, without really flipping through them, she gave my papers back.

I held my breath as she started typing something in her computer. After the eternity of 10 seconds, she gave me the magical yellow slip and said, "Here you go." I said thank you, turned and never looked back.

I could just imagine myself jumping, yelping up and down outside the room with all of my supporters cheering as I show them my yellow slip. But this wasn't the American Idol, it was simply the elusive, hopefully not so disillusioning, American Dream.

Copy

when we were just starting out

“…looking around there is nothing that I could want, more than to tell you
there’s no more than we’ve already got.” – gin blossoms

Just a while ago, I asked Igme to do something and he answered with the word, “Copy.” And that one word text message almost made me cry when I read it. And it was inevitable that the “why?” after that remark can simply lead to an inverted C-shaped mark with a tale and a dot.

I almost cried because Cef who was my usual text message companion till about 2 months ago, would usually answer using the word ‘copy.’ I remember being infuriated at times when after giving a whole lot of instructions, using up an equivalent of 3 messages per send, he would just answer with, copy. And I’d always complain how he can be so cold, that he didn’t send messages the way he used to, and afterwards I would feel like an angst-ridden teenager as he calmly splashes cold water on my face to kill the childish fever in my head.

I can be so intelligently stupid when it comes to petty arguments with him which we basically have almost everyday. At some point we were already tired of the pseudo scholarly debates we have over a shirt, a tone that was used, an unsaid expectation, or simply over a billiards game, that we even came to the point of saying that maybe the separation would help us both become more mature, and some other nonsense we made ourselves believe just to get over the twinge of being apart.

I called him up after I saw that message from Igme. And as usual, the 33-minute budget card just flew and we were at it again with our squabble which just ended with him not hearing me anymore, and me struggling to be heard till a voice prompt started speaking marking that we’ve already consumed the card.

Our voices were again breaking right before the line was cut. Till after the embassy interview, I will be carrying this luggage of agony of not knowing whether I will already be able to see him or not. And I feel this literally painful sting every time I would think of the days that I would come home without those pensive orbs gazing at me and that teasing grin which would eventually give me a kiss.

And so I pray hard. I pray that I would trust more in God so that I can shoo away these doubts. I pray that I can leave already before April 21, 2007. I pray for my family, his family, and every one else to be blessed. Most of all, as I realize how the most mundane of things could be the ones of the greatest magnitude, I pray that I can hear or read even just a single word from my soul’s poetry as I personally stand before him as he tells me, “copy.”

Internet Geek

I have just consumed three hours surfing the net and accomplishing two utterly sublime things for this blog - 1) Get an account in photo bucket so that I can have a picture URL for my profile (things which were totally alien to me a week ago) and this is thanks to Tonton, and 2) Get a Cbox which literally took me an hour to figure out (that I was already debating whether I was clueless, technophobic, or just outright internet stupid!) which was thanks to Shelly's suggestion.

While I was trying to do all these, I was sending text messages to Mika and Igme just to ask about how to get a tagboard and other needlessly worthy excuses for wasting time, and so at 1:35 am, Mika announced that I was already an Internet Geek. Phew! Who'd have thought!