Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Robbed by the ATM Machine

Alright, it’s 11:02PM of the 20th of October and I’m in seclusion. I started yesterday since the DSL went down due to the strong typhoon that hit our country. I didn’t really want that to happen. I mean, I could have gone on with seclusion and still maintained my blog habit, but it happened so I took it as some sort of sign. I told myself, “This broadband ban for me is a good opportunity to harness my inner being in meditation.” Janette isn’t very happy with the situation, though. She isn’t particularly ecstatic about the fact that liberation from this no-internet-fiasco (as she termed it) would come no later than the first week of November, so she bought a Globe Tattoo unit for mobile internet so she could continue her stint as a virtual desk operator, but I don’t see the need to do the same. I’m comfortable being detached from the world of cyber brouhahas—just temporarily, of course... Just until I get home to Bohol.

So, today has not been a very good day for me. Payoneer Inc. and Metrobank stole $23 from my bank account and I was pissed. A day’s worth of food supplies went down the drain just because of some avoidable invalid transactions and balance inquiries. You see, here in the Philippines, if you use US Dollars as your currency, everyone will try to steal from you—including ATM machines. It isn’t uncommon for American tourists to be ripped off by desperate prostitutes in Cebu City’s prime whoring destination, Mango Avenue, but that ATM incident I got seized up in was just ridiculous. I was unaware that invalid transactions and simple balance inquiries had charges, too. I’m never going to fuck that machine with my MasterCard ever again! I don’t enjoy getting fucked up—no one does. Of course, except for drug addicts, which I’m not. And even that’s a different kind of fucked-up-ness.

Anyway, that’s enough profanity. I’m in seclusion so I should be peaceful. I got a haircut. I’m back to my schoolboy look with my semi-airborne do. I like it this way ‘cause my head looks normal. This look works for me, as my mom would say. You see, my head tends to look disproportionately huge if I wear my hair jetty. My strands are thick so my head looks thick, too.

What else did I do? Oh, yeah, I bought some cream for the allergies on my face so my mom wouldn’t freak out when she sees me. It’s not that bad; it’s just that our family has this thing about taking care of ourselves and looking good all the time. And after all that, I went to my close friend/ex-roommate Josete’s house with John for a movie marathon. John and I met up at the mall after his date with some girl, and then there we met Josete’s brother, Justin. He had to walk us to their place ‘cause they moved to a new apartment and we had no idea where it was. It was just coincidental that he was out buying DVDs. Would you call watching two movies a movie marathon? Well, no arguments there! It was a movie marathon as far as we were concerned.

Justin wanted to grab a couple of beers, but I declined. I haven’t had dinner yet even until now. The chicken stew is boiling away as I speak. I left it to work on its own flavors. That’s the great thing about stews. Even if they’re done, you can just pour in another cup of water and leave them for an hour without having to worry about the sauce drying up. It even develops a more enhanced flavor when you return. It’s about done now. I also marinated some prawns in beer and I’m going to start working on sautéing it right after this entry.

Anyway, that was basically my day. I'm not going to talk about what happened before 5PM except that I was meditating in the peaceful darkness of my room then.