Friday, July 21, 2006

ninja kids, dropping acid & that chinese girl

haven't been blogging lately because my broadband has been very unstable the past week. am now taking a short break from some truly insane translation work.

ever since i posted about that chinese girl, i've received requests for clarification: what exactly had she done to earn my eternal revulsion and disgust? the latest to ask is my favorite uncle who recently emailed me from arizona. am recycling here parts of my reply to him because i have little time to blog these days. here goes:

a lot of people have asked me about that chinese girl's unbelievable remarkable feat. well, simply put, nangulangot siya sa harap namin while we were all talking to each other. not the discreet patago and self-conscious pangungulangot that most people do. instead, i witnessed an absentminded almost-unconscious matter-of-fact out-and-out digging for clams that lasted a full five minutes. efforts applied to both nostrils. but thankfully, one-handed & one-fingered technique lang.

ok sana kung ganun lang, diba? the thing is, we were at an ice cream place that specializes in serving bingsu. it's like halo-halo with softserve ice cream on top, which they serve in a huge communal bowl that's more like a punchbowl than a dessert dish, with long spoons sinking into the slowly melting slush. when i saw what she did, i stopped eating immediately. (actually, i actually felt the vomit rise up the back of my throat.) i was 300% sure i didn't want my dessert flavored with essence of kulangot.


my favorite tito also asked me if i really did experiment with acid (LSD), and didn't i think it was a very unnecessary risk? the following is the rather lame reply i came up with:

i wouldn't really use the word "experiment" there because that would imply a long process of trial and error. it really was just a one-time thing. whatever weirdness i felt that night i think was more from the tapeuy and the nganga, than from the acid. my friend told me that night that it was a particularly weak/old batch, almost a placebo. which on hindsight is a really good thing.

i was younger back then and i know i wouldn't do it now or ever again. but i'm glad i'm not curious about that stuff anymore. at least i can honestly say that i know drugs are pointless. i've tried them, and the experience is neither that great nor that evil to warrant so much interest and attention. it's the stupid and weak-willed people who use them that are dangerous, not the thing itself.

of course it was an unnecessary risk, and i knew it, but i did it anyway. i've done and still do and probably will keep doing a lot of stupid and risky things in the course of my life. i try to keep out of trouble most of the time, but sometimes there are moments when i say 'to hell with consequences!' and just go ahead and try things out. just for the sake of trying things out. but i'm a lot more careful now about what i choose to experience. i will however never claim that i'll always make the right or the smart choices.


as for the ninja kids... that was just shorthand for "preschoolers with the ability to kill, maim, or inflict massive amounts of pain on would-be attackers". they're not really ninjas, but little kids who hold blackbelts in taekwondo. i refer to my cousins josh and gabbie. josh is eight years old now but he got his blackbelt back in 2004, when he was six (six!). my tito proudly informed me that gabbie got hers just last saturday. she is at the moment five (five!) years old, but turns six on august 7th. standing at three feet or thereabouts, she's probably the smallest cutest killing machine in the whole state of arizona.

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