How can I justify this ukulele hobby, something where I am, at best, mediocre? It doesn’t quite hold up to my more prominent hobby, that photography thing, where I have some some semblance of confidence and pride?
I can’t.
How can I justify this ukulele hobby, something where I am, at best, mediocre? It doesn’t quite hold up to my more prominent hobby, that photography thing, where I have some some semblance of confidence and pride?
I can’t.
Hostile on the new year, eh?
That’s not as hostile as my first choice for blog title: 2009 You Bastard, 2010 You Bitch.
Though now that the holidays are over, expectations of daily life has normalised, and there’s none of that bloated, hopeful feeling, I now finally possess that settled feeling. December was the hardest, considering its where my birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve converge.
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Like most difficult predicaments this year, music was there to the rescue. I’ve always found it corny when people say music saved their lives blah blah, but now I understand: music doesn’t disappoint, people do.
On my sickbed this August, there were the dancing ladies of Perfume. On those overly emotional commute to work, there was the hope-laded pop-rock anthems of Kaela Kimura (I’ve discussed both acts on a previous post). On New Year’s Eve, the last chance that anyone could really cheer me up, I discovered ukulele geek-girl Tsuji Ayano.
There’s a more elaborate post on Ayano on my music blog here.
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The first half of New Year’s Eve was at work. I had expectations, but then I had a backup plan: buy pansit, make that festive food that night. However, after confirming via a phone call that this pansit place was open and was located where I would usually pass on the way to the bus terminal home -it was still listed as part of the now non-existent Fiesta Carnival on online directories- and locating the place, I resorted to doing the groceries to cook my own pansit. The pansit restaurant, which normally had the usual chairs and tables, was converted on that day to look like a busy phone billing area in the mall, an offsite horse-race betting place, an airline ticketing office on peak promo days. I was too tired and emotional to bother.
I cooked a Quezon special, sweet pansit chami, too much of it that I still have a plateful of it on the ref. Got sugar-free vanilla ice cream, too, which I realized was almost double the expected price on the checkout counter. No matter, I deserve this ice cream.
I damn well deserve that ice cream.