How do I loathe thee?

Geek is the new cool

There are three kinds of geeks. Fakers, actual geeks, and actual geeks who are insufferable over their geek status.

Fakers are easy to spot. They pretend to be geeks in an effort to appear cool, as being a geek is the new in thing. They’re harmless though, for the most part.

And then, actual geeks but divided into two: first, you have the person who nonchalantly, matter-of-factly refers to himself as a geek. They use the term mainly as a way to describe themselves and their affinity to get really into whichever interests or hobbies they pursue or like. The other kind, the one that drives me nuts whenever I have the appalling luck of having to talk to them, is the one who calls himself geeky a liiiiiittle too proudly.

You know. This is the one-upper geek. A legitimate geek, sure, but he is the kind of geek who makes you feels like it’s all a contest. The one who just HAS to somehow prove to you that he’s earned his geek cred as if you asked, and as if it even matters.

Having interests make someone more interesting, but talking about how interesting you are immediately makes you the opposite. Never mind that your wide knowledge of specific topics is real; if you care too much about what other people think, that makes you less interesting.

Dependency

I would never want to be needed by a partner; only wanted. To be told, “I can’t live without you” is not romantic — it’s the saddest thing ever. I want someone who’s complete, doesn’t need me, but wants me in his life anyway.

M. Scott Peck said it best:

The second most common misconception about love is the idea that dependency is love. […] Its effect is seen most dramatically in an individual who makes an attempt or gesture or threat to commit suicide or who becomes incapacitatingly depressed in response to a rejection or separation from spouse or lover. Such a person says, “I do not want to live, I cannot live without my husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.” And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend].” “What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].” I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love. When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”

People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love. They are like starving people, scrounging wherever they can for food, and with no food of their own to give to others. It is as if within them they have an inner emptiness, a bottomless pit crying out to be filled but which can never be completely filled. They never feel “full-filled” or have a sense of completeness. They always feel “a part of me is missing.” They tolerate loneliness very poorly. Because of their lack of wholeness they have no real sense of identity, and they define themselves solely by their relationships.

…dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure. It seeks to receive rather than to give. It nourishes infantilism rather than growth. It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.

That Day.

It’s near, I can feel it.

The store displays are slowly being infiltrated with the colors red and pink. Hearts, flowers and teddy bears abound.

Oh God. It’s almost Valentine’s Day.

I hate it. It’s a day fraught with heavy traffic and incredible noise. It’s time to avoid all of the malls and the restaurants and pretty places. Don’t even bother trying to hail a cab.

Two corners fighting over who gets to annoy you more. In one corner, the frazzled man trying to not fuck up Valentine’s Day for his woman. (God forbid the woman ever does something nice for the man on Valentine’s Day for a change.) Never mind that you have the rest of the year to show appreciation and love for your partner in a non-obligatory way that makes nice gestures sweeter. No, it has to be on Valentine’s Day, and if you don’t correctly guess what the woman wants and give it to her, you’re screwed. And not in the good way.

To this man, February 14 is the day of the woman. Preposterous. If it is indeed about love, as people claim it is, then this should be an activity of equals. It’s quite selfish to expect only the man to be the one shelling out major cash.

In the other corner, the Forever Alone types begin to bemoan their tragic situation. “Singles’ Awareness Day is coming up :( :( :(” they post on their respective social networks where other Forever Alone types will Like or +1 said post.

And then you have people who make jokes that are tinged with bitterness about how being single is more awesome than being in a relationship. It’s not a contest, man. You don’t win or lose life based on whether or not you are in a relationship.

Then you have the “I don’t need a man/woman to complete me!” types whose declaration loses sincerity and power when you recall that last year, he/she was crazy ecstatic over spending Valentine’s Day with the then significant other. You can confirm that it is a false declaration the next time they celebrate Valentine’s with a partner and they’re all back to status updates filled with hearts and happy smiley faces.

I hate it. I hate how unreasonable Valentine’s Day is. It just does not make sense to me the way most people celebrate it. Why has it become a day of obligation? And why do we keep it that way? Is that what love is, a promise to play nice provided you give me fake romance?

Paper vs. Plastic

It’s been incredibly frustrating buying anything in Muntinlupa ever since they passed a law prohibiting the use of plastic bags as container for merchandise sold. I try to remember to bring an extra shopping bag whenever I go there, to ATC for example, but I don’t always get to since I drop by malls at random times, whenever I feel like it.

See that picture above? The memo pads I bought along with the book still inside, fell off as the paper tore. Huh. I was under the impression that this was meant to hold my purchases by keeping them inside.

But no. We’re stuck with these useless, worthless paper bags because plastic is not environmentally-friendly. Never mind that one, we now have biodegradable plastic, and two, we can and usually reuse plastic bags in contrast to the paper bags which you can only use one as they rip when you put things inside it.

Sure, let’s stick with paper. It’s not like wasting paper, which is basically what’s happening with that ordinance/regulation, negatively affects the environment. No, no, no. I don’t like trees at all, so I am okay with this.

Y U NOT PREGNANT

“Are you planning on having kids soon?” is a reasonable question to ask a couple who recently got married — if said politely and not at all aggressively.

If on the other hand, you phrase it this way: “Why aren’t you pregnant yet?” or “No baby yet?” or “Is it there [in your womb] yet?”

Dude. That’s rude. And if you do it more than once, it’s fucking annoying.

Maybe they don’t want a baby yet. Maybe they’re trying but aren’t successful. Whichever reason it is, it’s none of your damn business because it’s not your body.

You are not a decision-maker in the relationship because you’re not in the relationship. You’re not the one who’s going to raise the kid, you’re not the one who’s going to be spending anything for the kid, and you’re not the one who’s going to push a human out of your vagina.

If you want a baby so damn badly, make one yourself.

Flakers

You’ve been planning for weeks now. You’ve made sure that your schedule is free, and you’ve asked your friend at least twice at different times if it’ll push through. Your friend confirms at least twice.

A day or a couple of days before, your friend backs out. What happened? No, no, not an emergency. Nothing super duper important, in fact. Your friend forgot that she had to do so and so. So sorry, can’t make it.

ಠ_ಠ

Email noobs/hellions

That is:

- People who use To/CC instead of BCC for mass emails, thereby letting every recipient know everyone else’s email addresses.

- The people who, in response to aforementioned mass emails, click reply all with an email that either (a) merely acknowledges receipt of said email (“Thanks”, “noted” or the ever-irritating “OK”), or (b) replies with a response that nobody except the sender needs to read. I will hate you more if you start corresponding with one recipient and you both continue your conversation still hitting the reply all button. Get out of my inbox, please.

- People who send a forwarded message with tons of FWD: [insert bazillion email addresses], not bothering to clean it up so that you can see how the email got to your inbox via the 10 people it went through before you, including their often inane comments.

- People who forward scams. Jeez Louise, maybe — just maybe — we can do a quick Google search to see if we’ve really won a prize by just sending it to all of our email contacts, yes? Unless it’s from a Nigerian prince. Those are always true.

- Those who use punctuation marks so sparingly you’d think a punctuation mark costs a dollar per instance of use. Also, those who refuse to capitalize the first word of each sentence, if there is more than one sentence. (I can understand a quick, one-liner. But a paragraph with missing periods and an unused shift key? Eyesore.) Lastly, “I” should always, always be capitalized.

- Those who send emails with GIGANTIC TEXT or teeny-tiny text. This can be rendered worse if you color the text, too. Sure, I’d love a pink email that I can read even if I’m ten feet away from my laptop. Oh - throw in a couple of glittery images as well, so that I might take your email seriously.

(‘Course, if you’re much much older than I am, and are one of those people who are unbelievably afraid of computers and the internet, that kinda mitigates the offense.

Speed humps aren’t stop signs

Why is it that whenever I am stuck behind a vehicle that does a full brake each time before a speed hump, the vehicle almost invariably is an SUV or some other large vehicle?

Really. A full brake, after which the vehicle slowly inches over the hump. I’d understand if your car’s low, and you’re trying not to smash the muffler against humps, but more often than not it’s always a big vehicle.

You know what makes it so much better, by the way? It’s when you drive really really fast in between humps and then you practically stop to a park before the humps. It’s awesome driving behind you! Yessiree. Yes, indeed.

Here’s how you know if speed humps make you an idiot: if a tricycle overtakes you at the speed hump, you’re too fricking slow.

*photo credit: Richard Drdul @ Flickr

Shopping

At the risk of having my woman license revoked, I must say: God, I hate shopping.

I don’t hate all kinds of shopping; shopping for gifts, for example, is something I always enjoy. But that’s because I love giving good/great gifts. Book-shopping is also an immensely enjoyable activity for this girl.

Shopping for clothes though - it’s a love-hate relationship, with hatred winning most of the time.

The love part comes from getting clothes that fit me well, bought at a cheap to reasonable price. The loathing occurs more often though:

1. Sales. I love buying cheap stuff but sometimes it’s not worth it. If you’re going to give me just 5 or 10% off in return for the amount of time I must waste standing in line at the fitting room area - no thank you. Unless it’s a great sale, e.g. Zara & Mango, where the discounts are pretty large, it is truly not worth it.

2. Annoying salespeople. You know, the people who keep hovering. They either push everything on sale to you, or follow you around the store in case you run away with their merchandise. Or more annoyingly, the salesperson who talks to you in a disinterested manner because she thinks you’re just window-shopping because you cannot afford to buy their expensive items. (Yeah that’s right, I’m talking about you, saleslady at Kultura.)

3. It’s ridiculously tiring, trying on clothes. Even worse: discovering that most of them - for me, anyway - are ill-fitting. Or sometimes they do fit, except your breasts are on display. Damn cleavage-y foreign brands.

4. When you take hours trying on clothes and end up with nothing. I hate that because I get no particular joy from trying on clothes, so after changing a lot of times and taking, say, 40 minutes in a store and leaving without anything — it feels like a complete waste of time and that pisses me off.

5. It’s hard to find the style that I like here in our malls. Rarely do I see sundresses in the regular stores, which is weird since it seems like one of the best things you can wear in the Philippines because of the heat. The non-frilly, sharp office attire that I prefer, I can only really find at expensive places. Which brings me to…

6. Women’s clothes are f-ing expensive. Seriously, man. The nice polo-type blouses that cost us around 1,500-2,000 pesos cost about 900-1,200 pesos in man-polo equivalent. (I checked.) Sometimes, on the rare occasion that I find something nice, I refuse to buy it because of the unreasonable price tag. P1,500 for a plain and very simple gray top? NO.

7. Shopping with other women. Lord, this is even more harrowing than regular clothes-shopping. An hour shopping with other girls feels like a whole day to me. My mother and sister can attest that my surliness and exhaustion increases exponentially for every minute over 20 minutes that I am with them as they shop. This is also why my sister has to bribe me with food and/or coffee before or after the shopping trip, to keep me from snarling.

I’m due for a shopping trip, actually. Some of my clothes no longer fit so well.

Ugh. The horror.

*Photo from redwood 1