humming in my head

I’m glad somebody wrote this. It makes me feel less alone.

(Source: castingaspell, via thrillsseekher)

Hey! I’m wearing my Techy Romantics T-shirt!

(Obviously, it’s a slow day at Splatshop.)

That’s not true, actually.

I don’t have lots of people telling me they inspire me. Nor did I ever set out to make this blog inspiring; I just started it so I’d have a space to air my thoughts and truths and obsessions without running the risk of being openly judged or dismissed or laughed at. I’m pretty sure there’s still a lot of judging and dismissing and laughing going on, but at least I’m not around to see it happen.

So when I read your message, I couldn’t believe it at first. I didn’t think I did anything to deserve it. And then, after the initial disbelief, I felt like squealing. I felt like hugging people. I felt like feeding the needy and taking them under my wing. In fact, soon after reading it, I tweeted this:

Today, someone called me “inspiring”. LORDY, I FEEL UN-FUCKING-STOPPABLE. :)

I will go ahead and finish that damn poem because you inspired me to! Your boundless love for words and music has inspired me, so much so that I want to be exactly the kind of person who would deserve your praise. :)

And because your guilelessness, your open-faced candor has lit me up on so many levels, here’s a beautiful song for you!

We’re both dreamers, you and I. :)

Before I forget, thank you, cluelessragdoll.

Saw this lovely surprise in my Tumblr inbox this morning.

People have thanked me for the mixtapes many times, but “lifesaver” is something else. And to think I’ve only been doing it because my love for music is so immense, it’s pouring out of me in giddy, giggly torrents!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Saj. <3 Your words make me want to share music with others for as long as I’m alive. But I’m pretty sure that’s already the direction I’m headed. :)

PS: Just give me a theme, and I’ll make you your own mixtape!

This is me posing like a little girl in a princess pageant at the Dr. Martens wall at Laneway Festival Singapore on February 12, 2012.

Earlier, Dr. Martens had announced that they would give away Laneway survival kits to the first thousand festival-goers to show up in DMs. I got there two hours before the event started in my flea market DMs, posed like a little girl in a princess pageant, snatched up my survival kit, then happily stomped off to the festival grounds.

That’s all you need to know.

You don’t need to know that, four hours later, my feet were begging for mercy because the big toe on my right foot kept chafing against the boot’s steel toe. You don’t need to know that, after the festival, I could barely walk to the neighboring streets to hail a cab. Instead, I just sat on the grass outside Fort Canning Park and hoped for deliverance in the form of an unoccupied taxi (they were a thing of fiction at that moment). You don’t need to know that said big toe had no feeling in it for the next few days. In fact, it didn’t feel like a part of my body at all.

Also, you don’t need to know that I looked nothing like that by the end of the night. I looked like I had gone to war and survived on beets and tiny insects.

(But you do need to know that I wrote an article on Laneway Festival. Read it over at PinoyTuner.com.)

Yesterday morning upon waking up, I noticed a precious sliver of refracted light on our living room floor.

Shaken out of my sleep-drenched state, I crouched down to stare at it. I was terribly amazed. I know people all over the world probably see slivers of refracted light on their living room floors all the time (do they?), but this was a first for me.

It was like having my very own rainbow.

It measured just about two inches in length and less than an inch in width, with edges that faded softly to give way to cold tile, but it glistened beautifully in the center and the luminous colors seemed to sway, as if in celebration of light itself.

It pointed towards the open window, as if it were saying, “GO! There is no better time to pursue your passions, learn more things, meet new people, fall in love. Look outside. Life is waiting. Rush headfirst into it.”

At least, that’s what I thought it was saying.

I love feeling the morning sun wrap around my bare legs like a warm cloak. I love how, in bright daylight, every color seems more alive: the blues seem bluer, the yellows seem yellower, and the whites just dazzle with a proud grace.

But when noontime hits and it gets too hot, I’m like, “AAAAAAAH GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!”

Yet another Angela Chase-inspired outfit.

I’m almost at the end of My So-Called Life’s first (and only) season. Just the thought of it saddens me. No teen show better captures high school life’s monopoly on insecurity, self-consciousness, and that terrible need to establish who you are in a world that all too easily slaps on your role for you, even before you’ve had the chance to find out what that role is.

Wanna bet? I’m gonna cry when I come to the end. And possibly dye my hair red.

Day 2 of dressing like a relic from the 90s.

Thanks to my dear friend Tine, I have a mild obsession with My So-Called Life, which explains the plaid shirt-and-boots combos. MILD.

But once I start lugging a Jansport on my back, you know I’ve crossed the point of no return.

In other news, that’s me at Splatshop. Like my page, ladies!

Last night, I finished downloading the full season of My So-Called Life.

I promised myself that I’d wear flannel the next day to celebrate.

Well, here it is. With matching steel-toe Dr. Martens to boot. (Pardon the pun.)

I AM A WOMAN OF MY WORD.

And that’s not such a bad thing.

(Source: joeydeangelis, via gingerlovee)

To console myself for losing my Php20 copy of James Wilcox’s Heavenly Days, I went ahead and bought myself two new books from the local Booksale: another copy of a book I already have (because I can never ever ever have enough Nick Hornby) and a novel that boasts “crisp, evocative sentences that can pierce like shards of fine glass.”

I haven’t read a page and already I’m hooked. I better have damn bloody hands after reading that one.

TOTAL DAMAGE: Php65 (USD 1.48)

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER BOOK.

One that I’ve conveniently lost, apparently. Left it at the clinic or in a cab or on Mars, who knows?

I know it cost only about Php20 (USD too-little-to-count), but I was just getting to the good part. Secrets were being revealed and the frumpy middle-aged heroine was finally growing on me. And there’s nothing I hate more than a good story unfinished. (Well, cheating partners, socks that don’t stay up, the substitution of “their” for “they’re” and vice versa, but we’ll get to those another time.)

If anyone finds it, please contact me through all available channels. I’ll be manning the hotline all week long.

Hello! My name is Cheekie. I run a children’s novelty shop, wear T-shirts featuring bands whose bassists murder their girlfriends, read books whose heroes kick gangsters’ heads in, and watch movies based on books whose heroes kick gangsters’ heads in.

But I run a children’s novelty shop.

MY BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKIN’.

Seriously, I could live and die in these things. And they’d even last longer than me, probably.

(Yet another one of my flea market finds.)