the weather has been holding up well, but it is clear that spring is on its last legs. tomorrow brings with it three continuous days of rain (april showers, an entire month late) and friday will dawn with summer winds, sunshine, and smelly teenagers on the train. still, midsummer is a couple of months down the road, so i won’t let that prospect disturb me as yet.

i decided to celebrate this last day of spring (in my books, that is) with a walk down to shibuya, winding through shinsen and dodgy back-alleys on the way. i discovered supermarket number 4 along the way – what a triumph! – and numerous love hotels marking the golden path to shibuya. they look rather decent by day when they are not illuminated by purple and orange and red lights. you would never know they were special unless you happened to glance at some of the discreetly-positioned signboards, listing prices for “rest (3 hours).” now, i would never have realized that the average time taken to complete these… restful activities… was 3 hours, if not for these delightful places. there was a particular one fashioned like a medieval castle of sorts, giving the entire area a very las vegas feel that i rather enjoyed. dogenzaka is supposed to be one of the main love hotel areas in tokyo. this, i have to remember, only because i do not want to sashay past it on one of my random night-prowls.

there is really a lot more to shibuya than the garish, central area with that famous cross-junction and that famous dog statue most people associate it with – noisy by day and noisy by night, and filled with drunkards and girls in short skirts most parts of the day, really. i rarely wander into that inner sanctum because it smells strange (truly it does), and people walk around so distractedly you are bound to hit or be hit by a handbag, umbrella, or randomly waving arm at some point in time. more, never go near the area on a rainy day (rainy weekend, god forbid!) if you love yourself and/or your umbrella; one, or both, will be damaged.

i thought i should document my walks and join the growing ranks of tokyo bloggers. there are many blog-and-snap-worthy things in tokyo, really. but i cannot be bothered with stopping every two steps to take a photo, or digging out my camera while my food chills in front of me. i much prefer to keep walking, looking, thinking, smiling, looking for my bearings, losing them. but my  mind keeps wandering to the camera depreciating away in the drawer, so maybe i shall.

the rain has come even as i type. there is a slight chill in the air, but the rain has cleared the air of the dust that plagues my existence day by day, so i am thankful. no walks for the next couple of days as the typhoon that wreaked such havoc in the philippines makes its way up. i shall put aside my restlessness and attempt to work instead.

i logged in and out and in and out of wordpress, wanting to write, not knowing what to write, not quite wanting to write, wanting to write… as the oft-quoted and famous “they” say – just like a woman.

i have just discovered that there are other treasures to be found in starbucks in addition to their giant chewy cookies and not-so-great-coffee, in the form of cloudy apple juice and caramel waffles ala stroopwafel! i bought them on a whim because i noticed that they were made (exclusively) in the netherlands, and they did come out tasting remarkably like stroopwafel, only less sweet and sticky. i am rather ecstatic.

and, truth be told, that was all i wanted to say; that was what that intense internal struggle was about. to blog (about waffles) or not to blog (about waffles) – that turned out to be the question.

how to break the curse – by blogging about it.

i complained about how sploiter virginals kept turning up in my top searches, and it disappeared the next day. i whined about how low my office chair was, and managed to right it the same day. i wrote about the mysterious negative vibes from hotmail, and woke up to find thunderbird working like it always did, and new emails popping into the inbox at regular intervals.

this is so exciting! what shall i blog about next? world peace?

three full days of the runs have doused my passionate call for civic action and world peace, but i am too in love with eggs florentine and morton’s (free) steak sandwiches to abstain from food so that things could be just that little bit better, so i shall retire meekly and whine about other things instead.

like how work returns after a brief lull – not in the form of a pleasant drizzle, but rather, all at once like a sudden cold shower. i have too much work again, and am somewhat torn between relief and despair. and i hate it when i cannot settle on a single emotion, so it has generally been an annoying day.

the weather won’t settle into any sort of permanency either. i strutted out with my sunglasses at three in the afternoon today, only to remove them and don a cardigan just two hours later because it started to pour. and pour. and pour. i haven’t been friends with sunglasses for something like… ten years (because when you are young and poor, you can generally only afford the variety that makes you look like you need a white cane too). i suppose i should be grateful that i could be as pretentious as i wanted to be for at least a couple of hours.

and in the vein of young bloggers who like to detail every single thing that happened in their lives, and every single thing they have to do in the next twenty-four hours – did i mention that i have yet to look through that nightmare of a piece for tomorrow’s practice; nor have i learnt the arias for voice class the day after (incidentally, the new assignment is due that very same morning); nor have i completed the photo-video i am supposed to be making for The Bride on behalf of ten friends (or thereabouts) and the wedding is in all of four days. i received the manuscript for the new book i am supposed to be working on for the next three months and really have no inclination to even glance at the first chapter (which is due, again incidentally, on the day i return from The Wedding).

i don’t suppose anyone understood any of that, or even cared to read through it (but it is all so meaningless, i would likely respect you more if you had not read it)… but then i write for no one to begin with. i am still not sure why i blog so much when my words do not mean anything to anyone. perhaps having a nom de plume makes me feel mysterious and important, and possibly famous. or perhaps it looks a little more sane than sitting around talking to myself the whole day. or perhaps i could pretend that someday, it would become a celebrated book – a record of life in the twenty-first century, a study of creative expression on the web, a testimonial to the infinite greatness of unlimited cable connection.

oh, i think i’ve lost my point. do you not think it is admirable that i actually spell out all my numbers?

i am so sleepy.

at some point in time, i will have to start remembering that 28-going-on-29 is no age for staying up all hours of the night. how do people age gracefully? i feel incredibly rebellious and uncomfortable with how everything – physical and mental – is changing… and i am still more than a year shy of 30. just 30. i can imagine going to bed at eight every night even before i hit 40. how can a university lecturer go to bed at eight??

that aside, i have just discovered that wordpress tracks my visitors. i have never used one of these tracker  things because i had always fondly assumed that my blog was completely hidden away from the public eye. interestingly, wordpress now tells me i actually have visitors (other than the two whom i actually know are reading this). exciting! and scary! who are you?  now i know i am really, truly, out of the closet. i feel a little… strange. and exposed. like i have been caught wearing a bright pink polka-dot dress. (i can’t really think of anything more outlandish and embarrassing. i apologize if you actually own a bright pink polka-dot dress. i just can’t believe there is a you out there!)

i know, theoretically, that web communities have immense power and potential. today, i felt, for the first time, how truly amazing this all is – the ability to connect with strangers, and to share my little joys and heartaches and pms-days. i have a web persona. wow.

sunday nights. i hate them, really.

sundays have become an endless carousel of work that i cannot say no to, and when night comes… when night comes… all the old, familiar emotions come flooding back, and i just want to crawl into bed and let the music flow over me – scant comfort, but comfort, nonetheless.

i have given up trying to give titles and tags to my old entries. it is not worth the time doing that just to satisfy some silly, anal need for uniformity on my blog. it’s not as if anyone will actually notice… i thought about putting my blog up on facebook as part of the entire coming-out-of-the-closet thing, but lost my nerve somewhere along the way. do i really want to wear my heart on my sleeve like that? what would it be like to actually have people reading this blog? as with many other (bigger) things in my life, i can’t seem to make a decision… it’s so pathetic… i’m so pathetic.

i did read through all the entries though, but maybe i shouldn’t have. they brought back too many memories of failure and depression, and emotions that i have been trying so hard to keep locked up – if i cannot learn to deal with them, i would rather hide from them. it is not the most praiseworthy thing to do, but at least they wouldn’t be able to destroy me that way. but what a colourful couple of years these have been! how i have grown… and changed… and yet, stayed just the same.

sunday nights. i really do hate them.

is! a! genius!

i cannot rave enough about the import function. all my blogger sentimentality have been safely moved here. i feel like a complete person again. i am also, officially, an out-of-the-closet blogger! yee ha!

now i have the enviable task of going through close to 300 entries and giving them titles (which i never used to in blogger), as well as deleting some of the more embarrassing ones (i get to keep some skeletons in my closet).

i have to repeat: wordpress! is! a! genius!

…those things you wish somebody knew, yet can’t bring yourself to shout to the rooftops about.