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Gelle
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Dee! OMG! May Pic ka sa Marie Claire magazine for the month of May. Yung sa speed dating ni Sam Oh. Page 59. Kasama si Jess.
I’m a simple non-popular girl. The only other time my face has been on the page of a publicly-circulated medium (not counting school papers/mags and yearbooks) was back in first year college when our city’s local paper published a front page story about how proud our city was to be home to four students who snagged four of the twenty-five nationwide slots of the GSIS scholarships. My written work has been published only twice — one of my poems found its way to The Philippine Star’s YoungStar section back when I was in High School, and one of my class essays impressed my College Constitution professor so much that he published it in his column for a local paper. But to see my face on a glossy page circulated nationally was somewhat interesting. So the next day, I bought myself a copy of the mag with my trusty Caltex starcard and sure enough, there we were, smiling happily from page 59.
And I thought I’d get to bury this event in a forgotten cobwebby attic in my mind. Do magazines really do that? Publish something that happened three full months after it did? Three months should be long enough to forget something…to forget someone. But don’t I always say that unspoken ill feelings are like poison that will eat you up inside if you don’t purge it out of your system? So here’s to purging – and hopefully, healing.
It was all Jess’s idea. He was watching ETC on tv and saw an event being advertised – a speed dating event co-sponsored by ETC and Itzamatch.com. Though the guy does not have a single romantic bone in his body, maybe the February air affected him and made him decide to try his luck at love. He asked me and Ruth to go with him. I wanted to say no. I had been to two speed dating events before this and thought that it was impossible to meet and like someone within five minutes. Besides, I had another event with another set of friends to attend. But for some reason I can’t explain until now, I found myself saying yes. So February 16 found Jess, Ruth and me making our way over to the courtyard.
It wasn’t bad actually. There was free hors d’ oeuvres and drinks, and lots of entertainment – Conrad the cute magician who wowed us all with his third magic trick, a trio of sexy girls serenading us called the Silk band, and even a corny ventriloquist. The guys on my table were not exactly pleasing, though (and neither were the girls at his, Jess would say later), and I was thinking about leaving and going off to my other event. Just then, the guys at the other table switched over to ours and I found myself looking at him across the table. My heart jumped. I stayed.
He was unlike any other guy I had ever talked to on speed dates, or any date, for that matter. He made it a point to contradict everything I said and annoy me on purpose. That should have been a bad thing but to my horror, I found myself attracted to him even more! Parang nasa Koreanovela lang ang feeling. At the end of our super extended five minutes and he had to move, I thought to myself, “Goodbye and good riddance!” and yet…my pen checked the box for yes on the question, “Would you be willing to date this guy again?” Yikes. Somehow our table was short of people, so he was back infront of me again as the seventh guy. We kept on bickering until the program ended, and even when everyone else on the table had left, we remained glued to our seats.
The next day I was singing Jose Mari Chan’s “Is She Thinking About Me?” all day. It felt wonderful to be in like again. I hadn’t felt this way in so long. We went on several dates after that. I was in cloud nine…then suddenly, just as quickly as he came into my life, he disappeared. Just. Like. That.
May 2, 2007 Diary Entry
I have once again immersed myself in the wizarding world of Harry Potter in Hogwarts. Proof of just how drowned I am in it is the first thing that pops into my mind whenever I wake up…no longer a certain guy who shall not be named (shall we start referring to him as “Lord Voldemort” now?), but a certain spell. “Episkey!” says my head. Huh? I mumble groggily in reply. Yes, I talk to myself a lot. Sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud. It’s weird because that spell was used only twice in the entire Harry Potter series, and only in the latest installation yet, book 6. Tonks used that spell to heal Harry’s broken nose. Later on, Harry copied her and used the spell to heal Demelza’s wounded mouth during Quidditch. So why on earth would that spell stick in my brain? It was much later that I started thinking..maybe my subconscious is telling me I need that spell to heal something I have broken…my heart.
wow…that’s so cool. si ms. ruth yun? hehehe…
yep…si ruth yan. 🙂