rAnDoM tHoUgHts + mUsIc

xl is our old car.  he's been with us for about ten years now.  we got a new, bigger vehicle about 3 years ago (whom i call my boyfriend) and i've been using that more often.  so that leaves my hubby with xl.  but sometimes, we exchange cars when hubby has to go somewhere far and the new car can be more trusted when it comes to long distance driving.  and oh, he also uses the new car when meeting friends... you know, it's more 'presentable' in that way (sheez).

so this was what happened over the weekend, hubby had to go to quezon city, which is about 50km from our place.  i wasn't so sure about the road conditions that time because it just recently flooded along the way, so i let hubby use the new car  (why do i keep saying 'new' when it's already 3 years old... ok, i'll call it 'bf' from now on.) and that left me with xl.  it was really just fine coz i wasn't planning to go somewhere far anyway.

at 10am i got restless.  i took a quick shower and went to the nearby mini-mall, about 15minutes drive away.  i was planning to buy some dvd's from the neighborhood 'pirate'.  when i reached the mini-mall's second floor, the stalls were nowhere to be found!  oh no!  this was one of my nightmares, not having my weekly supply of movies to watch on dvd!  i asked around and i was told that the pirates had gone to another 'mini-mall', i think it was because this other place was more obscure for the 'authorities' to find out ha-ha-ha.  it was another 10minutes drive away and so i thought, what the heck, i'm already here anyway, so off i went to this other 'mini-mall'.

despite the bad traffic, it was heaven when i got there.  so many dvd titles and for even cheaper price!  after about half an hour, i left with 5 dvds, mostly tagalog movies which i didn't watch while they were showing in theaters (baduy daw, hahaha).

i was in a hurry going home. traffic was again bad, but i was able to criss-cross, cut and inch my way through, beating most of the cars on the road.  i was that confident coz i know which lane to go to avoid delays, such that i was near the neighborhood entrance in just about 12 minutes.  i was getting excited that i will be able to sit back at home, relax and watch the movies then suddenly, the car engine stopped!  i started the car again with no luck.  then i noticed that the car was already over-heating.  this is baad!  why does it always happen to me when i drive this car? 

luckily i was already at the neighborhood gate and i managed to stop the car at the side road so i didn't cause any traffic.  heck, i was even luckier that the security guards were there to assist me push the car near the sidewalk!  they gave me water to refill the radiator then they noticed that one of the gaskets was already damaged and water was leaking from it.  fortunately (again!), there  was a nearby car supplies store just a few steps from where i was, and the store was selling that spare part.  so there i was, in the middle of the day, having a stalled car, trying to fix it with 2 security guards.  good thing i was wearing something decent, hahaha!

which made me think, perhaps xl doesn't love me coz he's done this with me 3 times already.  (well, the 2 times were after i "rearended" him to another car heh-heh).  but come to think of it again, maybe he loves both me and my husband, coz he chooses me to have these 'moments' coz maybe, just maybe, i can deal with it better?

barbie (of course it's not her real name) is an american, and the wife of a manager of an american firm.  the husband got assigned to their manila office and he brought his wife barbie along because it was a two year tenure.  the couple got to stay (part of the work package) in a posh subdivision, where the who's who in manila live.

now barbie was such a character - she was the rebel kind.  it was a company policy for the expats and all their relatives to seek office permit prior to any travels around the country.  but she would sneak out and go as far as quezon (southern part of manila) to have an experience of living in the province.  perhaps she was even able to meet some rebels like her.  but she had good reasons.  see, barbie didn't just eat any kind of meat.  for instance, she wouldn't eat chicken if she knew it was from the poultry because that chicken didn't experience living freely.  i guess it was the same with pigs and cows.  and the province was the only place where she could find a real farm where the chickens and pigs and cows live freely before being butchered.  i know it was weird but it's her life.

then one day she came across a stray cat.  it was a local cat, no high breed of any kind.  she took pity of the stray cat and brought it home, took very good care of it. 

and then finally it was time for the couple to go back to the states.  barbie couldn't let go of the local cat.  so she asked the office admin personnel that they would bring the cat with them to the states.  the admin people went crazy!  a local cat, going to the US.  well they couldn't do anything, after all, she was the wife of the manager.  so they took care of all the documents the cat needed in order to be brought overseas.  lucky cat.

after a couple of years, an admin guy heard the news.  barbie and husband were devastated, coz the cat left their house and didn't come back.  so after all their hard work of bringing the cat to the states, cat just left them.

and now we're wondering:  could the cat have gone TNT? 

An ex-officemate who's now working abroad came home recently for a short vacation.  He invited my officemates for an overnight stay in Anawangin beach, in an island in Zambales.  Well that trip turned out to be almost fatal.  A group of them almost drowned.  The ex-officemate being the worst case -- he had to be brought to the hospital to be revived.  Luckily, he survived the ordeal.  Click here to read the first hand account of one of the officemates... Anawangin Beach Experience