A Glimpse of New York and my Francophone Summer

I am still alive. Yes.

The end of the sem is drawing near and I have been through a lotta shit. well actually classes are almost over, tomorrow's the last day of regular classes--so i just have to pass all these papers and reports--and embrace the summer like crazy. yes like crazy. I've never been this glad for the summer vacation, i welcome the heat!

had a chance to talk to a close friend who recently got married in YM. and she seems happy, though she confesses she's a little homesick.

What could i say, i wanna visit her there! the MOMA and the Met weren't overrated she said. and she has yet to visit central park. it feels inspiring to feel that sense of adventure and discovery she's experiencing right now and where else? New York City!

i know i've bitched about the empires in my previous posts before but i can't help it...if they have orientalism for us in the east, i have orientalism-in-reverse for them. yep, the west is the land of, well for the lack of a better name--the promised land. when the east is shrouded in mysticism and the exotic, the west to my mind's eye is shrouded in what else--urban chic. the modern lifestyle. sigh*

i am happy for her really. it just feels i don't know--i'm regretfully nostalgic. is there such a thing?

because we used to cram for our papers and projects at her house in Tandang Sora. and everyday, we ate at the same cheapo place on the campus, the fishball stand in our college's parking lot. i've seen her progress to two relationships all throughout those years, with tears, and heart aches on the side--and now she's like living this larger than life existence in NY. though she keeps telling me it isn't that great at all, still. NY is NY right?

i don't know, i wanna fall in love for a city. though manila is the only one i've known, my affinities for it seem common place. i guess i just need to see another city for comparison. coz how can you "love" the other if you haven't known anything else? i need to experience the manichean.

how much is plane ticket to NY?

a roundtrip ticket is like Php 70,000
that's almost the price of a baseline unibody macbook :-)

i have a place to stay so, that's for free

gotta leave a little for pocket money, etc.

hmmm

it still seems too indulgent for now.

man, how i want a higher paying job. like Php 50,000 pesos a month!
actually that's still a bit modest for my profession.

an art director, senior standing, earns like 90,000 well that's what i've heard--didn't stay in advertising long enough to know .
yep.
i could like go there after a month's worth of werk.

enough.

deep down i know my MA is more important right now. yeah.
i won't trade/sacrifice it for a short trip abroad (that would exhaust my savings).

i'm following my heart on this one.
(insert* That's What You Get by Paramore)

but there are small things to look forward to this summer.
hehehe

i enrolled for a french class at the french embassy. so, it's going to be a Francophone summer for me, and where else but at posh makati again, hehehe so i'd be walking around the hood i despised---wow--more than a year ago.

and i plan to to finish Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" finally. i've read the first three volumes already...but that was like 2 years ago? it was my small graduation gift for myself.

so i guess i have to reread again. have i told you I love it? besides the much used scene of the "tea and madeleines" it is a very rich novel. difficult to read sometimes--he has sentences that are a page-long hehehe but i love it. coz it really evokes Paris for me.

seriously.

how can you not feel that you too had played at Luxembourg Gardens when you were a child after reading Swann's Way? or pining for a Gilbertine during your afternoons waiting at Champs Elysees? yeah.

it is my wish to read it in french someday. yep, i'll buy the Pleaide edition at the Gallimard store in Paris! hehehe

but for the mean time i'll bring paris to me, in the heat of this Francophone summer.