I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.

I wish I could see myself in the future. I wish I could talk to her right now, ask her what she misses about herself in my present now.  Would she miss fending for herself, even if she really didn't make that much at work? Would she miss doing tasks in a monotonous day job? Would she miss the bleakness of the future, or has she gotten used to it by then?

I hope not to recognize her straight away. I hope she has managed to look fitter by then-- I'd be dying to know how she did it! I hope she has grown her hair beautifully. I hope she isn't dependent on food anymore in order to feel good, in order to escape stress. I hope she's less of a perfectionist than how I am now.

Surprisingly, I'm also hoping, envisioning, to see her gushing with a date on a lovely Friday evening. I haven't had butterflies in my stomach for the longest time.

He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.

But I cannot dictate my future, as much as I want to. It may be a scarier place, but who knows really? All I know is I can only stay wherever here and now is, while every second vanishes away to that bucket we all call the past.

I don't want to look back and regret that I did nothing... while I still had my parents living in good shape, while I still had the power to run on the treadmill, while I still had the choice to splurge my money only for myself, and while I still had my youth to enjoy.

Here and now. That's where I need to be.

* Quotes from the novel The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Currently listening to: Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
Currently feeling: complacent

I haven't told everyone about this, but I started working already last May 12, 2008. According to my job title, I'm now a "new analyst" in Accenture's Utilities Business Process Outsourcing division. My friends usually ask me how's work every now and then; I reply with my usual answer that "It's okay/it's fine".

That's all I can say for now because we're still undergoing training up to July/August. I was deployed into a new project, which requires training for both new and old hires, so we can acquaint ourselves with the system of our client in UK. In respect to our client, we also have to start drilling ourselves with British English as well, so don't get surprised if I see you dancing in your room naked and I cry out "Blimey!" instead of "Oh my God!".

There are a multitude of things which I like about where I am today. But the problem with liking is its connotation doesn't come strong at all, at least for me.  Parang pang-short term lang kasi yung term. It's as if you're saying "I'm fond of you" but at the same time you know it won't last long unless you're given more reasons to move forward with your feelings. (Oh yes, ganito na talaga pag walang boypren. Pang metaphor na lang ang mga ganyan!) But, I think, this feeling of combined gratefulness and uncertainty is a normal mix of emotions for mostly everyone who gets under way with their first job. So to hell with quarter life crisis, just bring it on, right? But if you want "secrets to smart decisions after college", I think you should take a look at this one.

And just like in any relationship, "people would be a lot happier with the job they had if they were happier with themselves outside their job." That's according to Penelope Trunk, the author of the career blog which I check often nowadays. In my case, my most remarkable moments are with my family, so I make sure I also invest my money in spending some oh-so-quality time with them.

So, in celebration of my first paycheck, I treated my family to dinner last night. This is also my way of saying thanks to Pa, for sticking it out with me while I was in the far-off land of 'the Ateneo'. Thank you for teaching me how to commute from Pque to QC when I was in my 1st year in college, for waiting in the car for hours every time you pick me up from school, for bearing the 2-hour drive home whenever we come across the Friday traffic jam, and for cooking food for us while Jules and I were staying in the Katipunan condo.

Pa was so giddy last night as we were going to celebrate 'his' day. They didn't believe I was going to take them to a restaurant at the topmost floor of a hotel, until, when we reached the lobby, I told them to tilt their heads and look above:

Haha o di'ba ang dramatic ng tagline, pang Star Cinema.

(Up, up and away)

Currently listening to: Jordin Sparks' One Step at a Time
Currently feeling: content

Day 1 in work starts tomorrow.

I should forever remember this day, hence the post.

Wish me luck.

Currently feeling: hopeful

Just finished reading Alexander McCall Smith's The Right Attitude to Rain. I'm a follower of McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series simply because it feeds me with thought-provoking lines like these:

In the context of eternity, this is nothing, as are all our human affairs. In the context of eternity, our anxieties, our doubts, are little things, of no significance. Or, as Herrick put it, rosebuds were there to be gathered, because really, she thought, there was no proof of life beyond this one; and all that mattered, therefore, was that happiness and love should have their chance, their brief chance, in this life, before annihilation and nothingness to which we were all undoubtedly heading, even our sun, which was itself destined for collapse and extinction, signifying the end of the party for whosoever was left.

But she knew, even as she thought this, that we cannot lead our lives as if nothing really mattered. Our concerns might be small things, but they loomed large to us. The crushing underfoot of an ants' nest was nothing to us, but to the ants it was a cataclysmic disaster: the ruination of a city, the laying waste of a continent. There were worlds within worlds, and each will have within its confines values and meaning. It may not really matter to the world at large, thought Isabel, that I should feel happy rather than sad, but it matters to me, and the fact that it matters matters.

---

"I'm very fortunate," she said. "I'm well-off. I was left money. That's where it comes from. But I try not to splash it around, I assure you. I don't live in great splendour or anything like that."

"Pity," said Miranda. "I would, if I had money."

"You don't know that. You might find that it made no difference. And it doesn't, you know. Once one has the minimum required for reasonable comfort, any more makes no difference to how you feel. It really doesn't."

Isabel watched them return to the counter. For each of us, she thought, there is our completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding, is a matter of moral luck.

And BBC recently aired the 2-hour pilot episode of McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I've been searching for that title in National/Fully Booked/Powerbooks, but it's always out of stock Anyway, I'm downloading the episode now to see how it goes.

Currently listening to: Keane's Somewhere We Only Know
Currently feeling: thirsty

I've been notified that so and so is following my Twitter page, but I'm clueless, how did they find my page? Weird.

Anyway, I'll post a more sensible post after I buy office clothes in Greenbelt.

Currently listening to: Essie Jain's Disgrace
Currently feeling: chipper