Pounding The Keyboard

       Lately, it is a recurrent theme on her social media posts: Panic. She’s panicky. She’s panicking. And she needs to calm down. Why? What’s wrong? Maybe, she knows something a lot of people don’t know.      Maybe, she’s aware that the world will soon end.      Perhaps, an asteroid the size of Hong Kong will hit Earth before the year ends.      Or a nuclear war will soon erupt, initiated by a deranged president.      He wants to comfort her; tell her everything will be all right even though he has no idea what is making her panic. He is an ex-boyfriend. He wonders if it’s still his responsibility to mollify her during anxious times. He continues to feel something for her. But she’s too far away from him now, emotionally, mentally, and physically.      He also has no idea that she has some sorts of power. Like a third eye. Or the ability to predict the future.     ...

       Her house had seven doors—doors to three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a storage room, and a mini-library. And he watched her through all those seven doors. In her bedroom, he watched her sleep. In her younger sister’s bedroom, he watched her talk to her sister and sometimes sleep beside her. In her parents’ bedroom, he watched her converse with them. In the mini-library, he watched her read her books and admired her shelves filled with wonderful books that opened portals to amazing worlds, and in the storage room, he watched her keep and organize things.      It was love at first sight—ever since he saw her at her old relative’s interment.      His agony started a few months ago when he heard her talking to her parents. “I feel like someone or something is haunting me,” she told them. “It’s standing by the door of my bedroom, watching me, I can’t see it, but I can feel it.”      They consulted a spirit medium. ...

          I saw this meme for introverts (see photo above) this morning and I laughed as I was reminded of an incident last year. I was in a small restaurant (just a stone’s throw away from our house) buying something and there’s this lady with her young son sitting beside me. We’re in one table. We’d been waiting for around probably ten minutes for the food we ordered when she started talking to me (I was busy with my phone).      “Kumusta ka na?” she asked me.      “Okay lang,” I said, surprised that she would ask me that.      Then she started small-talking me, and I’d just smile and nod and answer tersely, wondering why this stranger was talking to me like we’d been a part of each other’s life.      It turned out that we were former neighbors (she just left the apartment beside our house a few weeks ago that time), and we were neighbors for years. Lol. And she’d often see me going out of our...

       US and Israel continue to wage war on Iran and posts about it continue to dominate Facebook today. While talking about the war and the US soldiers that were killed, Trump suddenly, out of the blue and without any provocation, changed topic and talked about the “beautiful golden curtains” inside the White House. That demeanor is called “creeping dementia.” The sad thing about this, people around the world are saying, is he will probably die before he gets punished for all his crimes.      Love, if you’re still suffering from high blood pressure, there’s this simple but effective exercise to lower it. No equipment needed, just your strong, smooth, beautiful legs. They claim that it’s more effective than running miles. It's called wall sit. You sit still against a wall for two minutes, take a break and rest for two minutes, and do it three more times.      Jim Carrey is still going viral because of his “unrecognizable” appearance. P...

        So, there's this thread that appeared on my News Feed, claiming that reading gay literature will make you gay. I think it’s BS, I didn’t join the conversation and continued scrolling down, but it reminded me of something: a book, a boys’ love manhwa actually, that I’ve had since last year. It’s Roses and Champagne, written by ZIG and illustrated by Ttung gae. It's a compilation of four comic books. I planned of giving it as a gift but I wasn’t able to do it, and I wonder why. Lol.      I haven’t read it not because I fear that it would tweak my sexuality and make me wear skirt; it’s just that I am not a fan of boys’ love. But trust me, reading gay fiction won’t turn you into gay, just like actors accepting gay roles will not turn into queers, not that there’s wrong with being that way. I’ve read (as part of my job as a freelance editor) a few gay literature and comic books, some of them really hardcore, and it didn’t make me want to rush to a ...

       So, Today is Chinese New Year, it’s a holiday so it must be big deal. And we had tikoy for breakfast this morning. Lol. Filipinos hate Chinese (re West Philippine Sea issue), critics say, but ironically, they love many Chinese things, especially their New Year. I don’t know, but what most Filipinos hate is the Chinese government, not the Chinese people per se. Like me, I hate what the Chinese government is doing on West Philippine Sea but I don’t hate Chinese people or their products. My phone is China-made, and so is the all-in-one PC I am currently using. Many of my favorite foods are Chinese influenced, like siopao, pancit, lumpia, mami, hopia, taho, and tikoy, of course, and we love eating in Chinse restaurants (Din Tai Fung is a favorite). And our next-door neighbors are Chinese, and they're sort of nice because they are quiet and they mind their own business, unlike the other neighbors. Lol.      So, most Filipinos don’t hate Chinese. In...