Undecided

Here's what I wrote in my other blogs:

The writing's on the wall, so they say. I've a propensity for writing long stuff, but this last chance, I'll try my very best to keep it short and sweet. I'm closing doors to blogging. Maybe on this blog. Maybe for my other Liwaliws as well. Maybe temporarily. Maybe permanently. There's no big drama here. I'm just stopping. So there.

Then I found my way back here, Liwaliw at Blogger. Started in July 2003, it was the first of the Liwaliws. Last post was November 2008. Some stuff blogged elsewhere since then. But for most "happenings," no blog was written.

I couldn't decide. I was feeling sentimental. So from the very late hours of yesterday to the earliest few today, I was just fiddling with Blogger's new settings and layout features. Then I slept.

Woke up late today (actually, normal for me while in vacation mode). I've made some kind of decision. Not the kind that really settles the issue. I've decided to post this update. So there.

Moving on, moving out (?)

Before anything else, I'm posting this now:

http://glenncruz.i.ph

I've signed up with Blogger in 2003, but really got into blogging 2005. Blessing in disguise, this recent Internet outage due to the ongoing repairs south of Taiwan has made me consider other options. For the past weeks, US-based services like Google's and Blogger's were dismal, and that's understating it.

I've first got acquainted with i.ph at the iBlog 2 summit last year. I've began to seriously look into the service only last week, spurred mainly by the Internet outage, the encouragement of a Globelines tech support (which was rather displaced and non sequitur) to explore and enjoy more local-based sites in the mean time, but was prompted by learning of markpaul's blog.

So dear folks, especially those who I've shared community space here on Blogger, I may be very soon migrating to i.ph - your opinions most welcome, please visit what I've done so far "over there."

Having nothing else to do, I blog

I'm essentially doing nothing, I texted my hunny. He must be in his usual busy self in the office right now, he might not even have a wee bit of time to text me back. It's okay, I also do that to him sometimes.

This is a rare occurence for me, blogging in the middle of the day. Having nothing else to do, I might as well let my fingers do some keyboard talking. Ordinarily my workload is such that I only get to blog very late at night/very early in the morning of the next day. Today is not that day, but an idle body I may be right now, the mind still rages on with the twisting and turning of many unanswered questions... imagine a Rubik's cube as an unanswered question, then multiply them with any two-digit numeral. Haaay! Questions, questions, its desired answers would have made me more productive today. My semi-employed existence continues, and November came in with a vengeance for the many things that were left unresolved the month before.

While the Global Fund seemed to be running more smoothly now in our Southern Tagalog site, the Albay project is still in limbo. Our people are still waiting how the project will be getting started. Yesterday, the staff sent us budget requests for some activities; I don't even have their final workplans and budgets yet. I'm not one to be too restrictive on staff in doing their, er, stuff, but somehow for this case, I have to decide not to release funds without knowing for sure what will be coming in. Boring chore, someone's got to do it, and by the end of this week, I will become the "bad guy" in all of this. I can feel it coming.

The next round of Global Fund remains an unfulfilled promise (for those in the know, that would be Round 5). Its roll-out is such an abstract idea that a Kandinsky would have been more coherent, a Malevich more explicit. A few weeks ago I got a tip that the fund management group for this round will be publishing an ad calling for proposals on major newspapers supposedly first week of November. I've been buying newspapers for days now and nothing. I really don't appreciate seeing a growing stack of old newspapers at home. Aside from the stack being a muted mocking thing, painfully feeding into my growing desperation, I also get to reflect on all the wasted money it represented.

I don't have much use for newspapers, actually; my current events needs I mostly get from the Internet. When I do get to read newspapers, I get the news of the day bundled with unwanted icky printing ink, dizzying flip-and-search of continuations of stories, and frustrating realization of the increasing incidence of bad editing and wrong grammar of some journalists. With the Internet, it's a bit easier: my mouse doesn't smudge ink, reading is essentially scroll and click, and when bad writing/editing is emerging, the window can be easily closed, better writing of similar stories always a promise, always a Google away.

Things are not going so well in the PNAC either. I was supposed to have a very critical meeting yesterday for a major activity in December. The meeting was cancelled and I was not even informed. Later last night, a colleague called me up regarding our intended advocacy in line with the ASEAN Summit. Certain allegations floated around, most surprisingly, that PNAC no longer plans to go through with the advocacy. I wasn't informed of that either. Most irritably, people from whom we needed answers are not around. I was supposed to attend an emergency meeting about this ASEAN thingie today; had to be moved as other people already have their appointments set. So how about tomorrow then? People haven't yet replied. It all feels so disabling.

A posting post the post

Gregg was right. I was totally the different person when we met later in the night, after I wrote that awful, desperate and whiny post about I having nothing of urbane civility left almost a week after Milenyo. Writing seemed to have purged all the angst. I asked him to join me in Malate while at home, enveloped in the now-familiar sticky heat darkness, after realizing that I don't need to endure another depressing candlelit night. We, which later also included Mark, hung out at Chelu and drank for no special occasion... well, maybe except for one, my liberation from all anger and anxiety of the previous days. Or maybe this night marked the last stage before grieving for my destituted existence could genuinely begin. We drank, got modestly drunk, and I wasn't too modest about spending my dwindling savings on luxuries like beer. We also ate, we ate a lot while Gregg complained about needing to lose the weight he's packing in between bites of balot, chicken skin and all other sorts of street food fare.

At one point, Mark realized that we haven't been together like this for a long, long time, us being essentially what's left of our Gen Gali/Mr. Piggy's peer group. What was intended to be a simple night of needing to get drunk so I could sleep for much longer, ended up in anticipation for Sunshine Dizon (that's gayspeak for sunrise). Back home, morning sunlight was already beginning to pour in my room, on my bed. How to sleep in bright daylight and the heat of the day microwaving you in the bedroom? Well, I didn't sleep much. Again.

Then the day before power was restored - and the fallen billboard was cleared - I flew to Davao to attend the Philippine National Convention on HIV and AIDS, for the first time held outside Metro Manila. PNAC was sponsoring two community fora during the convention; I was supposed to facilitate small group workshop sessions during one of the fora. The fora didn't bring results we expected, and I feel that the organizers would have to explain their "interference." (But I'm not going into this - at least, not right now.) But the best thing I got from this trip was sleep. When I settled in the hotel on the first night (some cheap but functional inn near Davao Doctors Hospital), I was already asleep 8PM (which is very early for me) and slept 12 hours straight. I had an itchy throat the morning after though; I ran the A/C full blast directly on me all night. Talk about depravity.

When I got back in Manila, the first week of restored electricity also little by little restored our normal activities. That meant getting back on the oh-so-many concerns from within the office to PNAC and to wherever else. I haven't submitted that ADB proposal yet, after learning that I have more time until the deadline for the second round of submission. I once promised myself to finish it as soon as power was restored and life normalized again but *sigh* the momentum somehow was lost, I mean, that frenzied, fierce and inspired drive to write and beat the deadline. Crammers from all corners of the Earth would know what I mean.

I didn't have a particular angle when I started this post, I'm not sure what my point is. Maybe this is an assurance that I'm still a sane person after all insanity. Maybe this is a closure that attempts to be dignified, after having exposed oneself as an embarassingly, half-crazed whine-bag. Or maybe, quite simply, this being the posting post the despondency post is itself the angle.