I was chatting with a friend about why I usually wake up late. I told her it’s mostly because I sometimes stay up all night doing some things on the Internet. Her first thought was “You’re chatting online?” Saying yes would have probably made me look better in her eyes but I had to say “No, just doing some stuff.” Now, because I didn’t mention blogging, that could’ve sounded a whole lot of other things. Anyway, the point I’m trying to get to here is that it reminded me of the time when I tried to chat online with strangers just to know how I would like it. I didn’t. But there was this one person who seemed sensible and decent enough (and he had a really cute, possibly fake, picture) who I managed to chat with for more than a couple of times. He said he’s a writer based in Barcelona and if I’d go there he’ll be more than pleased to be my tour guide. He talked about the culture and the places to visit and it did sounded like he’s actually there. But it’s not as if I’ll really make the visit.

Anyway, Barcelona does seem to be a lovely place. Of course, Madrid is the gateway to Spain, the city being the country’s capital, but Barcelona also offers a whole lot - majestic architcture, old churches, parks, and museums, among others. Overnighting in a Spanish hotel doesn’t need to be a difficult task to plan because you have sites, such as Hotelsespanol, that provide access to last-minute deals and prebooked discounts for Spanish cities. So whether you’re searching for Barcelona Hoteles, Las Ramblas Hoteles, or Madrid Hoteles, you’re choices are just  a few mouse clicks away. And look at some of the room offerings:

Asturias Hotel Madrid

Zenit Borrell Hotel Barcelona

Olivia Plaza Hotel Barcelona

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

-Haruki Murakami (from Kafka on the Shore)

I think the heart holds everything. The reason for everything. It’s too small. But it’s everything.

For the first time in quite a long time, I was able to sit through a full days’ work at the office without feeling agitated and bored out of my mind with what I’m doing. For a second there, I actually stopped when I realized that I was actually enjoying it – the same ‘ol thing. That’s always a good sign in my books. There’s hope after all, with continuing on, or at least with continuing on while keeping my sanity and a little bit of enthusiasm. Maybe all these new year cheers have been getting into me or maybe it’s just because it was quite peaceful and there were very few people at work today, but it’s good to be able to have that joy again even if it will not last. Makes me wish I can sweep all my resentments and dissatisfaction under the area rugs and just start with a clean slate.

… it never occurred to me before how many faces there are. There are multitudes of people, but there are so many more faces, because each person has several of them. There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, gets dirty, splits at the seams, stretches like gloves worn during a long journey. They are thrifty, uncomplicated people; they never change it, never even have it cleaned. It’s good enough, they say, and who can convince them of the contrary? Of course, since they have several faces, you might wonder what they do with the other ones. They keep them in storage. Their children wear them. But sometimes it also happens that their dogs go out wearing them. And why not? A face is a face.

- Excerpt from Faces [Rainer Maria Rilke; Translation by Stephen Mitchell]

From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Fifteen minutes to midnight.

It’s getting pretty noisy outside. People are celebrating. Fireworks are starting. Houses are still brightly decorated by little light fixtures. My phone’s been buzzing with messages of goodwill. I think I’m excited about the new year. But I don’t want to jinx it, so let me just say this little wish:

I hope we’ll all go through 2009 smiling a lot more often than not. Be happy. Love a lot. Insert a ridiculously big smiley here.

Here’s something so insanely great I have to blabber about it again even if I’ve already featured this in my other blog. 

If you haven’t heard of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog by now, then let me introduce the lovelorn videoblogger and aspiring supervillain with a Ph.D. in “horribleness”:

“Any dolt with half a brain can see that humankind has gone insane” -Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris)

It’s #15 in TIME‘s Best Inventions of 2008 and listed among Washington Post‘s Best Viral Videos of ’08.

Apparently, the webisodes were created during the writer’s strike in America. Quoting the WP, “the video was enough to make us consider the types of things we might all be watching when we’re no longer watching TV.” And here’s something from the master himself:

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first. – Joss Whedon

So, it’s a musical about a guy whose grand ambition is not to have a high-profile job, wearing nice suits or silk ties, but to become a supervillain who will rule the world with his “evilness.” With the girl of his dreams, Penny, and his arch nemesis, Captain Hammer (a “smarmy superhero who thinks he’s all that”), they are featured in a 43-minute, three-act Internet phenomenon that is refreshing both for its silliness and awesome music. Keeping Sondheim songs in his iPod really did wonders for Joss Whedon.

At the Buffy reunion during the 2008 Paley Festival this year (I saw the DVD), Marti Noxon, producer and writer from TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice, said that if Joss Whedon will call her one day to say that he’s building a rocket, she wouldn’t doubt him for a minute. Some people are just so talented they come up with unexpected things just by setting their minds onto it. Well, I believe such people only set their minds on things they know they can do; it just surprises others to finally see how much they really can.   

Another person in that panel who has been working a lot is Amber Benson. Her credits include actor, writer, director, producer, singer, and humanitarian. She’s only 31.

From left to right: Amber Benson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Emma Caulfield (March 2008, PaleyFest)
 

I’ve been lurking around Buffy forums to read episode discussions and fans seem to love this girl even if she isn’t as well known as her costars, mostly because besides creating an endearing character on TV, she seems to be a genuinely nice person in real life. What impressed me is seeing the range of her work. The acting part seems to be the bread and butter (she’s been in some obscure movies I don’t think I’ll ever watch), but she’s also co-written comic books and books; wrote, directed, produced, and starred in two of her own independent films; cowrote and directed a cult animation called Ghosts of Albion for the British network BBC; written and presented her own stage play; composed and recorded two songs for her fans; and is about to release her first solo book series to be published by Penguin Books.

I would do anything to be able to have half of that. Well, anything that I can do, I mean, without having to pack a Zero Halliburton and travel the world to learn things. Anyway, I haven’t finished watching her first attempt at writing/directing – a movie called Chance (2002) – but I kinda like the opening monologue (voiceover):

All right, you live your life in a totally normal, full-on reality check kind of way. That’s good and cool. Things don’t get messed up. People you love hang around until you can’t stand them anymore. Things never change. But shit like that doesn’t happen in real life. Real life is just a movie with someone’s finger jammed on fast forward. The numbers change faster than you can count. When you’re a little kid, you never think you’re gonna die. I mean death is just some kind of esoteric thing you see on TV or read about it in a book. Then one day you realize what it really is, and nothing is ever the same again. From that day on, you’re f&*%ed.

I was standing behind a yellow bus on a lazy afternoon, I think I remember that the sun was almost about set then and the wind was gently sweeping fallen leaves on the road toward my direction, when someone tapped me by the shoulder. When I turned around, it was a former classmate in high school. I haven’t seen any of them in almost 8 years now. I think we talked for a bit before he asked me to get into the bus. I obliged. As I step inside, I saw the bus was empty. I followed my friend as he walked toward the tail part of the vehicle but as I do, the space between the bus floor and ceiling gets narrower until I was down on all fours, trying to reach one of the windows so I can get out to safety.    

How’s that for a dream? It’s a real one I had, in case you’re wondering. I don’t always remember my dreams in perfect clarity and I like it better that way. Sometimes, though, dreams like this one make me go all metaphysical and give it a lot of thought. Well, I think I have to because the moment I woke up, I was still breathless, although more baffled than shaken up. Admittedly, I haven’t been getting good sleep because I work well with my writing tasks during the wee hours. Any sleep study will tell you that a normal night sleep pattern is better than the same number of hours of sleep during the day. There’s actually a Florida sleep study that helps people with sleep disorders understand the root of they problems so they can finally get a good night’s sleep.

I don’t know anyone who has ever visited a sleep disorder center, although I know a few friends who only sleep when the sun’s about to rise. It works for some, but even if it has been an on-off  habit of mine for a few years now, I still believe I’ll be more productive, and not to mention healthy, if I sleep early and wake up early instead. Oh, I don’t really have a sleep disorder. Its more lack of discipline than anything else. I can decide to go to bed anytime; most times, I fall asleep the moment my back touches the bed.

So about that dream. Would be fun to nitpick something so abstract. But, really, yellow bus? We didn’t even have a school bus in high school.

I’m going to be at the office tomorrow. The announced one week and a half vacation was going to have in-between (overtime) work days after all. Well, I’m not really complaining. But the thing is, I had to ask my colleagues first about what time they’ll report for work. See, I usually prefer to start working late in the afternoons during holidays; but I’m presuming not many will actually show up these coming days, so I have to make sure I’ll be out of the office as early as possible.

Scared of being alone in a large deserted workplace? You betcha! I make it a point not to listen to ghost stories that my officemates are only too fond to swap with each other because I’m fairly coward about such things. Anyway, this thought came to me when I was watching a favorite episode of The X-Files, which incidentally was about ghost hunting on Christmas eve. Scully had a very rational explanation why we fear ghosts so much:

Scully: These are tricks that the mind plays. They are ingrained cliches from a thousand different horror films. When we hear a sound, we get a chill. We see a shadow and we allow ourselves to imagine something that an otherwise rational person would discount out of hand.

The whole idea of a benevolent entity fits perfectly with what I’m saying. I mean, that a spirit would materialize or return for no other purpose than to show itself is silly and ridiculous. I mean, what it really shows is how silly and ridiculous we have become in believing such things.

I mean, that… that we can ignore all natural laws about the corporeal body that we witness these spirits clad in their own shabby outfits with the same old haircuts and hairstyles never ageing, never… never in search of more comfortable surroundings — it actually ends up saying more about the living than it does about the dead.

I mean, Mulder, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in psychology to understand the… the unconscious yearnings that these imaginings satisfy. You know, the longing for immortality, the hope that there is something beyond this mortal coil that we might never be long without our loved ones. I mean, these are powerful, powerful desires. I mean, they’re the very essence of what make us human. The very essence of Christmas, actually.

Well, she was really trying hard to convince herself there. I do prefer to take her opinion, though. I prefer not to see one. I don’t even look at so-called “proofs.” I mean, if you’ll see a ghost and you happen to have a Canon camera in hand, would you take a picture? Well, it’s fine if you will; just don’t show it to me.

Since I’ve read about this brand of notebooks called Moleskine, I wanted to buy myself one. You know, just for the heck of it. I love notebooks. The classic ones, the pretty ones, the stationery-like ones, the leather-bound smart-looking ones. But, as with many other people I know, I don’t really write on them. I mean I love the idea of writing – the physical action of moving your hand that holds a pen over a piece of paper so that your thoughts can manifest. But whenever I hold those crispy, white pages in my hands, I can’t make myself defile them by my awful handwriting.

You can argue that a notebook computer is the better way to go.  Sure it’s more pricey but its functions are way more diverse that I shouldn’t have bothered to compare. But then again, that’s exactly why the idea of writing on a notebook is so enticing – it’s basic, it’s time-honored, and it’s how my favorite poets worked in their time. Ah, well, I think I’m gonna buy myself a Moleskine now.