Comfort Zone
I first sat at this desk on the 9th of August 1999. I left it in 2003 to follow my family’s dream to Mindanao. In 2005 I was back again, although in a different location downstairs, with the technical group. And mid-2006 I moved back up here again, on this same spot, heading the web design and development team.
The wall murals were painted in 2003, by the same local artists who did the walls at the Paco Park Hotel. Five of us share this room, you can barely see Belle and Gerald if you look close enough. You can’t see Chu, because her table’s right across Gerald’s, and you can’t see Mark because he’s taking the picture, and you can’t see me well, because you can’t.
But that’s my Batman tumbler to the left of the laptop (from the KFC Batman Begins promo). From that you can derive that I don’t really get out much. And to the right of the laptop, that’s my tasang makabayan on which the various revolutionary flags of the Philippines are painted, with descriptions of who made them and when. That’s my Ubuntu Toshiba laptop right there, and to the right of it is my ancient desktop pc (oi pero 2GB ang RAM nyan).
The rest are the mess I usually have on my desk to make people believe I’m busy. These days I actually am. I’m using the last few minutes before I pack up and go home to write this post, as I may be too busy to write over the weekend.
I have a shelf/table/closet behind me where Chu and I share storage and where Mark and I put our stuff like knapsacks and baon and other sundries.
We’re in one of three offices upstairs. We have the biggest room, since there’s five of us. Our boss and his right-hand “man” Abi share the second room, and Arlene is queen of the accounting office. Downstairs is Technical and Reception, and the pantry, our favorite place.
I’ve been here a total of six years. It’s my second home, and on some days in the past it actually was my home. The people in it are not just my co-workers, they’re my friends, and a couple of them are actually godmothers to Maia. It’s one of the places where I am comfortable being who and what I am.
When my baby said goodbye
The blues walked in this morning, when my baby said goodbye
The blues walked in this morning, when my baby said goodbye
I wish I could change her mind, but I know it’s no use for me to tryYes will you talk to me baby, if it’s just by the telephone
Won’t you please talk to me baby, if it’s just by the telephone
Let me tell you how I miss you baby and how it feels to be alone–B.B. King, Blue Shadows
It had been impossible to say goodbye to her, whenever I had to go off to work. I tried it once several monts ago and she bawled the entire morning until she fell asleep. It was impossible to show myself to her dressed for going out. The minute she spied shoes on my feet she would grip my arm and say “no, mommy, stay inside.”
But then I thought she would have to come to terms with it sooner or later, so a couple of weeks ago I started to not hide from her after I’ve dressed up for work. The first day she was in the room with me while I was dressing up. I had just put on my Converse EV Pros (yes, the brand new ones I was wearing when I waded home in the first flood of this year, but that’s another story) when she insinuated herself onto my lap saying “storybook” as she gave me the Goodnight Baby book that we read before she went to sleep the night before. After we had said goodnight to the last baby in the book, she lifted her right foot to my face and said “Piggy!” which is, of course, to say she wanted take This Little Piggy to Market. Of course after we’d done the right foot, we had to do the left foot as well.
Before she could run out of reasons to detain me, her Ate Bebing came and took her away for her bath, and I stole away, like a thief. And that’s what I’d been doing ever since.
Yesterday morning I was walking around the house already in my office clothes and she was pedaling around the house on her three-wheeler (a newly acquired ability) not minding me at all. When I was ready to go I went to her and kissed her, saying “Mommy’s going to the office now. I’ll see you later.”
She smiled up at me and said, “Bye Mommy!” like she’d been saying it forever, waving her hand. I kissed her again and then grabbed my knapsack and headed out the door before she had a change of heart. Her father usually walked me to the bus stop but when she saw us both at the gate, she protested saying “Ama, come inside!” Mature as she was she was not going to allow both parents to leave her behind. I told my husband to stay with his daughter.
As I walked to the bus stop alone I wondered how long this show of grownup-ness was going to last. When I arrived at the office an hour later I called the house to ask how she was, the people at the house reported she was fine. In fact she had taken her Ama’s hand after I’d left, and told him in her unintelligible but charming way that Mommy was going to be back in the evening, that he shouldn’t worry, and that he should be a good Ama and stay inside the house with her.
My baby’s all grown up now …
Interview with the Bambit
Before the interview which I brazenly volunteered for at her blog, let me tell you something about my blogging sis Mari. She is the first ever visitor to my blog way way back when I started out at blogspot, and I will cherish her always because of this.
And here are the questions she asked me:
1. Have you reached a certain point in your life that you can call crossroad/s? what did you do about it?
Oh definitely, and it wasn’t my annulment either as how I’d earlier thought, but found myself at a crossroads one quiet afternoon five years ago while sitting at a coffee shop at the Shangri-la Mall, when the man I was having coffee with suddenly said, “Well, since we’ve decided to try having a baby, shouldn’t we think of getting married as well?”
There I was, wondering whether to turn left, right, go forward or just plain retreat. I was living the life of a single mom, earning adequately for myself and my young sons, having seriously thought of having another baby with my boyfriend but without the bounds of marriage that I had just severed less than two years ago. A baby is one thing, but another husband? O diba eh di nawindang ang lola mo.
But I took his hand (figuratively ha, ang jologs naman ng literally) and started to walk the road with him. Haven’t looked back ever since.
2. Do you spoil your kids?
Every chance I get. Which is not often, considering the financial situation I’m in. But when I can I do. Toys, gadgets, their favorite food. Coke, ice cream, fries, mcnuggets.
3. Career moms like us try to maintain a work/life balance as much as possible: is there really a balance or would you consider this as an understatement?
I would like to think there is a balance somewhere, we’re just not earning enough to find it. 
Moms always get calls at work from their kids asking this and that, making sumbong or just plain lambing, and at the back of our minds we wonder what we’re doing at the office when we should be at home combing their hair or feeding them. It will always be that way, whether or not we’re the sole breadwinners or we’re working to augment the family income. Mommy is the first word my daughter says when she wakes up (well actually the second word, the first one being “milk”). Can you hand me my balancing pole please …
4. What do you love most about having a partner?
You mean other than convenient sex? (Just kidding, Sam) Having him looking at me at the breakfast table and making me feel like I’m Sophia Loren in her bridal lingerie. Yeah.
5. In your opinion, should a marriage be spouse-centered or child-centered?
Spouse-centered, until the children wake up or come home.
so if you wanna be interviewed, here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Maia Queen of the Jungle
In the empire of the senses
You’re the queen of all you survey
All the cities all the nations
Everything that falls your way– Sting, Love is the Seventh Wave
About Me
