Street Monkey: June 2008

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."

- C. S. Lewis

Life would be so lonely without having friends around... My Makati friends are not only my friends but they are also my officemates, flat mates, homies, drinking buddies, shopping partner and movie marathon pals! When we can go home early from work, nothing beats watching lobo or my girl or whatever is on tv worth watching while we are seated on each of our permanent seats on the couch and yes we don't have cable TV or else I would have so many channels to flip to during commercial breaks but unfortunately I accidentally broke the remote. ‘And Yes Ryan, It was an accident and I am not the destroyer’. We do love to eat canned goods and Korean noodles. A Home cooked meal would always mean Sinigang! Sinigang is something that can be consumed during dinner, lunch, and breakfast the next day and midnight snack day after. Even if we cook sinigang every weekend we all would not get tired of eating it. The unpleasant smell of something rotten is something that we already have gotten used to... or finding the laundry being soaked with detergent powder in the toilet for weeks... But what the heck we always have a good laugh with practically anything...

Having no parents around means we can stay up late, come home drunk, leave the dishes unwashed and keep left-over on the fridge for weeks, or just let our room be so untidy as it can get. The boys’ cabinet looks like a display from ‘ukay – ukay’ or in English ‘mix-mix’ hehehe. However, being grown-ups living together we try so hard to be a bit responsible. During Sundays, we try to clean the apartment as in wash the dishes especially the rice cooker, do the laundry, and clean the toilet. As much as we can drink and be merry most of the time, we try to avoid it. When we hang-out we try to maintain our sobriety hehehe yeah we do try but when the booze is free it would be bottoms up bai!

Our individuality and uniqueness shows in the music that we like listen to. Ariel’s ipod will definitely be all mellow and mushy pang Love radio something Ryan will definitely not agree of listening to. On the other hand Ryan often accuses me of copying his play list. And yes, he’s the one person who continually torments me with his pranks like he’ll text saying he left his wallet or he doesn’t have a key only to find out he’s already inside the apartment and it was all a joke… I am just so gullible.

Monthly grocery will always mean an argument with Weng and Ryan. Before we enter shopwise he will always remind the girls to make it fast which I think is impossible. You know how ladies are; we always take a pit stop at everything....before buying anything we tend to read what the label says... sometimes after reading we don't even put the item in the cart. Weng loves to window shop like I do or like most girls love.

We definitely love teasing each other… like Ryan and Ariel would love to tease Weng about marriage or we all love to tease Ryan about all the girls he loved before and him being a gifted child or him teasing me about my mind always being absent and sometimes staring blankly into space… My mind is always absent maybe it has gone into hibernation or how I love to tease Ariel during his call center time slot.

Each of us is an example of the complete irony of life. Ariel for example listens to mellow and love song does not like rock and alternative but on the other hand he loves to watch the movie collection of Sylvester Stallone. He has the entire sequel for Rambo, Rocky and other Stallone super action movies. While Ryan has this animated personality. One minute he’s in this lively and teasing personality and then the next thing you know he’s like a time bomb waiting to explode.

My life has become quite monotonous, waking up at 6 in the morning and spending 12 hours each day in the office which has already become a vicious cycle but a good laugh with my homies and lazy Sunday afternoon at home with my so called friends would always make my day right, completely extraordinary and insane…