I've put stuff over at still runs after buses, but I'm undecided about whether I like the WP installation or not.  At any rate, there's stuff up over there and yeah, I think that's pretty much it for now. :)

Busy, which used to be a word that I couldn't even begin to put into that list of adjectives to describe my life, is what I have been lately. Things have been happening, both good and bad. However, the important point to consider is that I'm still here, alive and kicking ass and later on, I'll also be taking names.

Bad things first. The weekend before last, after having a super time at a punk concert with a classmate, I was mugged on the way home. To make a long, grisly story short, they took my bag and I had to go wake up one of my housemates to take me to the police station. I went to bed at eight that morning, after cancelling my debit card and writing a couple of emails. The good news is that yesterday, my old landlord called to tell me that my student card turned up in his mailbox, so I'll go pick it up today and see what else they might have at the Oficina de Objetos Perdidos at Portal de l'Angel.

Neutral things... School is still school and we've got a whole bunch of projects to finish, and thesis topic selection is up. I still haven't decided on what I want to do, but there's a couple of interesting projects with those tactile tabletop interfaces and I'm seriously looking at that. So far, I've found a movie buddy, a walking home buddy, and a punk concert buddy among my classmates, and there are my perennial groupmates, which I also consider new friends. I just wish we had more time (and money, since we're all on a shoestring student budget) to go out more and spend time together outside of class.

And good things. I was down in Sevilla for the weekend and over there I found a little piece of home. Omigod. I have no words to express how wonderful and magical and strange it is to visit a place for the first time and feel like you know it already. In spite of having been years out of Manila, I still consider it home, and while we were driving around Sevilla, it just felt like that... home. It even smelled like home, which is the oddest, craziest thing. The homesickness I've been feeling for the longest time abated a little while I was there and now I know that whenever I start feeling overwhelmed and dislocated and out of place, there's one place (relatively) near where I am that I can go to and feel like I've just gone home. I'm looking to go back over the holidays and I guess I'll see how much like home it is. Three days wasn't a long time, but it did leave a strong, heartwarming impression.

I think I'm also in my nesting period here at the flat. I now have those hooks that you hang on your door, a little box where I keep my clutter, a lamp from Ikea that I got for about 10€ and this poster of Tom Frasier's New York City Map on my desk. I took out my desktop mini-zoo, which is now joined by this funny little bull that I picked up at the souvenir shop at the airport on the way home from Sevilla. This place is starting to look like someone lives here. I also love my room. It's been a long time since I've said that.

And other things. I'm signing up for the gym later since my new insides requires a new outside, and... I'll be moving my part of this blog to http://still.runsafterbuses.com. (There's still nothing there yet right now.) Joshua and I have decided that while it's fun to have a team blog, due to both our schedules and the kind of blogging that we're doing (I prefer to write, he prefers to make video blogs), it's getting to be difficult maintaining a balance in here. We're still good, though, nothing to worry about.

So that's the state of affairs over here. I'll see you over at the other side!

I have been busy. My, have I been busy.

The past two weeks have been a flurry of activity, school-wise and everything-else-wise. I barely had time to sleep, much less write anything coherent.

We had a string of group projects and presentations that had me exploring different ways of working with different people. Nothing too complicated or creepy happening there, only that last week I worked with someone else who wasn't a regular groupmate and... it was different and a lot of fun, actually. More accurately, what made it fun was that we had beers and pasta while doing the project at his house. And then he started smoking weed, so... we were doing the project with me tipsy and him high. We laughed a lot, he got teased to death by me and his housemates. The best of all, we turned in a stellar report. It was awesome.

The other big thing that happened recently is that I finally moved to the new place. It's in a nice neighborhood away from the tourist area where I used to live, but not too far away from where the action is. It's about a 15-minute walk to the Ramblas and to Plaza Catalunya, as opposed to what could've been about half the time where I used to live, but it's enough to get me out of the way of drunk tourists and those pesky Erasmus kids who puke in the streets at four in the morning. And those motorcycles whose sound echoed between the buildings in the narrow streets that only fit one car at a time. And those bickering Filipinos that lived across the street (yeah, I could understand every single word you say...) who'd start arguing at the most ungodly hours. The only thing I really miss at the old place is the bakery that had those nutella donuts. I'll go back there one day to get myself some. Where I am right now is a lot more residential, although there still are some bars and restaurants and those one euro stores (like those dollar stores that I absolutely love) and Kwik-E Marts. Things are also slightly cheaper, and I haven't seen many tourists in the area. Again, awesome.

I live in an Ikea house, which makes me happy. My housemates are nice, laid-back people who I have stuff in common with and who actually want to keep a clean house (we have a schedule of who cleans what on which day stuck on the refrigerator!), which makes me happy. They also like to talk and they come out of their rooms and hang out in the living room, which also makes me happy. My room has a lot of light coming in at all hours of day, I can hang out in the kitchen and make decent meals, which (as you can guess) makes me happy. This was worth the wait, I would have to say, and I'm so glad.

I've also been getting to know my classmates a bit more. There's a group of us who walk back home from school, which means almost an hour and a quarter's worth of walking for me twice or thrice a week. It's a great form of exercise and it doesn't feel like it because you're talking to someone on the way back, so time flies. We've started calling it The Schoolbus, since we drop everyone off at a corner nearest to where they live. I'm the last one home, the Driver, I guess. By the time I get home, I'm too mellow to get bothered by anything, and happy to have had company. Last night there was just two of us, so we ended up stopping for a beer on the way home. Just one. We're back to being poor students. Haha.

Having moved so far away, having to reintegrate myself in a foreign culture, and not having the support that I used to have, is quite the task. Some days are tougher than others, and God knows how disappointed I've been at times, but I figured that all of it is just two things: one is that I have to learn to manage expectations (mine's and everyone else's) and two is that I should cut myself slack because I'm having accelerated growing pains. The first one, I say for cultural differences, the second one, because big changes like these tend to make anyone grow (not completely sure if it's up, though) at light speed.

And there's this... writing here, telling you what's been up reminds me of all the good things that have happened in spite of everything else.  It's been difficult but not impossible, and when I really think about it, this has been my choice and I'm owning it.  I would like to think that in the end, it's all these good things, all this learning to be responsible for myself and my choices, is what's important and what really counts.

Last night was fabulously social. I got to meet two of the people I've known online forever and a whole bunch of people after that. We went out to a warehouse-looking bar that played rock music, had drinks, hung out. I got back at six in the morning and crashed into bed. When I go out, I *go out*. Excellence is a habit, what can I say?

Today, I'm feeling the after-effects. I'm not talking about a hangover, because I didn't have one, but it's more like today it hits me how I don't really have friends-friends who I can call when I'm bored or when I feel like crap, at least not like the ones back home. And I know these things take time, and I'm an impatient person, but anyway... Considering how long I've been here, I can't really complain. They say it takes about six months to adjust to a place, and the first time I moved, I didn't feel as comfortable as I do now until about seven months in. I also feel overwhelmed.  Then again, I've been doing a lot of living outside my comfort zone, so I'm not really surprised.  I have to cut myself some slack.  I need to sit back and let things sink in a bit.

So. I decided that I'd feed myself well today because 1) occasional cooking makes me happy and 2) i need to eat something decent. I made some shawarma-type ground meat thing, cut up some tomatoes and cucumbers, got out my last tub of yogurt and went out and bought some bread. I couldn't find any pitas or chapatis, so I ended up with some random bread from some random meat shop. No, I didn't finish the entire thing, it was huge, the size of a medium pizza, and thick.

It was good, I feel slightly better. I'm glad days like these are few and far between.

I have been here for about, oh, 40 days?, and whenever people ask me if I'm from here, I have finally learned to say "Yes" even if I am still useless when they ask me directions. I can, however, get around and will survive when left to my own devices. This city isn't too big or too small, I can walk to almost anywhere if I wanted, pollution is down to a minimum, and when it's cold, it's not that cold. And in spite of whatever anyone else says, I feel safe here.

I'm chalking it up to my skewed sense of perception. My idea of far, is apparently very far; my idea of what's cold is very cold; my idea of what's spicy is way too spicy; my idea of hot is way hot, what I think is normal burns people's tongues. I'm not sure if I've got anything right, actually. I find that I'm oftentimes a little too extreme with things here. The moment that I say that Barcelona is a pretty relaxed place, I get all these WTF are you talking about, you crazy girl? looks from people. Umm, yeah.

There are days when I go out for a walk and I still think how weird it is to be here and not be a tourist. And I know better than to step on those tiny little puddles on the sidewalk. You. Just. Don't. Do. That. (Hint: Everyone and their uncle has a dog here. There you go.) I also think that's partly why the wash out the streets at night. 

..........

After weeks of putting up with bakery goods and whatever ready to eat stuff they've got in the countless Kwik-E-Mart type stores in this neighborhood (there are at least two in every block, I swear... and you imagine Spanish spoken with that accent? yeah, you're getting the idea!), I finally decided get my ass to a regular grocery. Unfortunately, the only one that's near where I live is a teeny-tiny grocery called Dia. And omigod, it has got to be the saddest grocery this side of the Mediterranean.

The Dia near the flat is a one-and-a-half lane affair where you can find really basic stuff, like at a Circle K, but you have a small meat and veggies section and freezers that contain more than ice cream. I don't know if it's the lighting but the three times I've gone, I thought everything looked sad. Whoever heard of sad meat and veggies? Sad canned goods, sad sandwich bread, sad cheese, sad milk? Well, Dia has them. But they don't have cereals. Maybe cereals are too happy for Dia. Then again, would you want to start your day with sad food? That must be it. Cereals are too perky.

I want to live next to a Mercadona or a giant Carrefour, like in Glòries. Never in my entire life did I ever think I'd be a supermarket connoisseur. Or that a supermarket could matter so much.

Anyway, I ended up buying onions, garlic, tins of tuna in vegetable oil (I couldn't find it in brine), a tin of callos and some ground beef. Kristian, the guy who lived in the room I'm living in, left a whole bunch of food in his kitchen cupboard and I've gotten the go-ahead to use them.

So this week I've been making food here at the flat because I'm tired of bread and takeaway from anywhere is too expensive on a daily basis. I'm starting with really pathetically simple stuff. I've had instant noodles twice (which I fiddled with as usual so that the instant ramen taste goes away), and today, because I came down with the usual spring/autumn thing I get whenever the temperature starts to change, I made myself tuna spaghetti.

I probably haven't had real, home-cooked food for far too long. It was really, really, really good. I still have extra spaghetti sauce left over, so I'll probably go back to Dia to buy me some sad dried cayenne peppers and some sad olives which I'm pretty sure are going to be happy to be in my spaghetti sauce and equally as happy to be in my happy happy tummy.

My resolution is to feed myself a decent meal at least every other day. When I'm not doing that or I'm just too lazy to cook, it's back to what I know I can live with: ham, fruits, cheese, muesli, and the occasional yogurt. Maybe eggs. And I'll throw in some salad as soon as I can find decent salad dressing. The only great thing about this student budget I have is that I don't have that many extras that I'd use to buy junk food. If it's not there, I won't eat it.

I think the hardest thing about being in another country and far away from home is dealing with loss from such a long distance. And when you're new in a place, and when you don't really have friends that you're comfortable feeling vulnerable with, it gets to be a challenge. More than the sadness, it's this terrible feeling of not being able to be there for your loved ones during their time of grief. It's frustration at its very worst; you want to be there for them, hold them, cry with them, but the best you can do is type out some words, let them hear your voice, and pray or send good vibes their way, depending on your religious or non-religious inclination.

My uncle died a few days ago, and the only thing I could do was write an email and chat with my brother who was having a hard time with it. That was all. I spent the day holding myself together; I put on a nice dress, went out and hung out with a friend because I checked out a room that might be free where he was living at, spent the day as if it were any normal day, only I was more dressed up than usual. At the end of the day, exhausted from the effort of trying to appear normal, I went out and bought a burger and two beers to desensitize me a little and to make it easier for me to sleep, and I pretty much just zoned out until about four in the morning.

Like they say here, A mal tiempo, buena cara. (At a bad time [put on a] good face.)

In a minor way, something similar happens to me everytime I need to move from one place to another. Depending on how attached I am to a place, I spend a period of time grieving for it. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes it takes a few minutes. It happens because I recognize that no matter how much I disliked a place, I still picked up something character-building (yeah, nice term, I know) from it.

I guess we just all find a way of coping with these things. You do whatever saves you.

..........

In better news, I finally have a permanent place to stay and I can move in in November or earlier, depending on the girl who's still staying in that room. I'll be sharing a really nice, newly-renovated, super sunny flat with two other people... at 60€ off the original price that I was quoted. It was a flat I checked out about three weeks ago and totally loved, but due to budget constraints, I went ahead and looked at others even though the owner told me that he'd keep in touch with me to let me know when the room would be free. I got along well with the owner and I also met the other girl who lived there and we also got along famously.

So the other day, I called him saying that I found another flat to share and that I wouldn't be taking this one anymore. He lowered the price by 30€ there and then, and then called back two minutes later saying that since nobody watches TV in the flat anyway, they were unsubscribing from the cable services which lowers the price another 30€. Now we're talking, now the price is smack within my budget... so I took it. I had to call the people from the other flat, tell them that I decided to go with another flat instead (I had already told them that I was taking theirs, uh-oh!) and yesterday I paid the deposit. I got a really nice email from the owner and he told me that I could start bringing my things there if I wanted to.

Of course, this story isn't going to end until I actually move myself in there and unpack my things, but everything is starting to look up. Finally. :D

The other day i saw a bike at performance bicycles in berkeley. it was the SE Draft, a single speed 700cc freewheel beauty. when i first saw her, i was like, hmm.. your sorta cheap looking, i don't know if i'd want to be seen around town with you, i mean, you know how people can be and such.

but she was unfazed by my remarks, and kept rocking her wide bars and boxy rims. she knew that i knew that, well, she was mine. so today, i went in and bought her.
as soon as i got her home, i noticed that she was slipping to the side a little bit, and knew that i was going to have to treat her right. so we went to her favorite little store, Manifesto bikes, and we bought her some nice rims. the entire time i couldn't help but think " baby girl i just met you and youre already hurting my wallet"! but alas, after i saw how beautiful she looked in those new shiny rims, i realized that i was going to have to make her know that she was the one. so i bought her a gold riser bar. Gold is her favorite color after all, and mine too.

we're a match made in heaven. I think i'll call her Sophia.

When you've had a rough spell, sometimes you just have to take care of yourself and do what makes you feel good. I've been at it for the past two days because, well, you do what makes you feel genuinely loved (genuine, being the more operative term, than loved), and, damn, do I deserve it!

So... I did some shopping therapy and went on a beauty day. I went to the asian store on Calle Tallers yesterday and picked up some stuff I've been craving for forever, and I also picked up some roasted chestnuts from a tiny stall I happened by. Today I finally bought a nice bag, a book, and I got a haircut to fix my wonky hair and a hot oil treatment. My hair is still thanking me for the hot oil treatment and my face is thanking me for fixing my awkward, puffy hair.

Tomorrow, it's back to normal. Or more accurately, to what's relatively normal. My sense of normality has been skewed ever since I got here. I have more capacity for tolerating weirdness and strangeness and twilight-zonish situations now. But. But there are still some things that I won't tolerate, and with all these changes, these intolerable acts just prove themselves timeless and more defined. This is a good age to know what's right from what's wrong and what's just weird and twisted. And then there's Omigod That's So Freaking Wrong You Should Be Banished from the Face of the Earth.

I'm growing into my own skin. It's all goooooood, baby.

I have been here for 30 days but it feels like I've been here for much longer.  I've come a long way this month. I am positive that I can work the Being An Adult thing now, even if I don't look it and I still don't feel completely adult. I've done things I never thought I'd do and things have happened to me that I never imagined could happen. And then there are the things I'd never tell my mother, lol. I have changed and grown so much in such a short span of time.  I can now also do my own laundry.  I just polished off a tin of mussels and I'm having a beer. That's tonight's dinner.  I'm loving not having to eat rice everyday.

Moving countries is something that I wouldn't recommend to just anyone.  If you're a person who doesn't like doing difficult things and who doesn't like a challenge, if you're not going to be hellbent to stick to it, it's not for you.  If you don't want your life turned upside-down, stay where you are.  If you want to lead a normal life, don't even think about it.  It's not for the faint of heart.

But if you want to enrich your life, open your eyes, and have your brain explode every five minutes... it comes highly recommended.

I had wished for an interesting life. Now I have it and it's been quite a ride. I've had enough excitement in the past 30 days to make up for the dullness of the past 2 years.

..........

Last night I saw a really strange musical performance with a classmate of mine. It was totally weird, like being in an Almodóvar movie. Everyone in the performance was in a wig, and the singer wasn't exactly singing. It was weird, but it was fun in a really odd way. I had a good time.

Afterwards we went to look for a bar, had beers and some tapas, talking and laughing all the while. I had no idea how much I needed to talk. We ended early because we had homework to do. Lame, lol. But it was nice to hang out with someone. I had been needing that for a while now. It's nice to make new friends. It's been a while since I did that.

I've been listening to David Bazan for a while. Not since the Pedro the Lion days, but pretty long in my world. His recent album "Curse your Branches" just recently came out and has been on pretty much non stop as i continue to push through my own growing pains of where i stand in the Body of Christ.  One song in particular has caught my ear and continues to play on in my head as i go about my day.  the lyrics go like this: