Unwelcoming 2010

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.

#

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.

#

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.

#

New Year’s Day was spent either on the computer keyboard, or the ukulele fretboard. I’m still not any good, and don’t expect to be, but as part of the music-please-save-my-life project, I’ll persevere, like any good ukulele warrior you would so often see on Youtube these days.

Song I’m practicing? Sunday Smile by Beirut.

The ukulele, this thing I eagerly come home to, got new strings last week of 2009: D’Addario Pro Arte Classical Guitar strings, courtesy of a Cubao-based music store, which I walk by every day from work. So glad I did my research and didn’t order ukulele strings online, when I could customize my own string-set by buying single nylon strings for classical guitar (two high E’s, one G, one B) instead.

If only strings bought me talent as well.

#

There. First post for the year. I’ve also started one of these Project365 projects the kids get into, but no, it won’t be a photo-a-day thing (too much effort; photography? BAH), but it’s just going to be one of those video-of-the-day postings, over at my music blog. Oh yeah, go to my too-personal, highly-opinionated music blog, slowly gathering content every few days.