Typical Me, Typical Me, Typical Me

I traveled to a mystical time zone,
And I missed my bed, and I soon came home.
- The Smiths

So here I go again, scrabbling around the flat at the most ungodly hour there is, at that bracket of time pinned between the opaque night and the first irreverent fingers of sunlight through the curtain. My place has always attracted too much clutter despite every noble effort, but right now, the mess is worse than ever: clothes everywhere, a couple of used Ziploc bags littered over the floor, my hiking pack leaning against the fridge, looking like some poor eviscerated creature that a bunch of poachers punted aside with a mean, steel-toed kick.

Make no mistake, I want to rally beside modern science in its bid for truth in the theory of evolution, but at this precise moment, the only thing I can imagine is Darwin's ghost hovering over my shoulder, clucking his incorporeal tongue, and thinking that the story of my life is the only thing that can torch his theory to the ground. All those years in the Galapagos looking at the beaks of those cute finches! Utterly wasted! Fucking shit!

Because – let's be honest here, kid – I don't evolve, and I never learn. This is the hundredth time I'm packing up for a trip at the last possible squealing minute, and my head is buzzing with lists that cancel out each other hopelessly. And I know I should be well-rested before I hike up any mountain, but forget it, I don't have time for sleep. Sleep, who needs sleep, goddammit. All I gotta do is soak my organs in coffee for the next twenty-four hours, and all I have to do is keep my head from crashing down to the keyboard while I'm at work tomorrow.

Anyway, I can feel myself coming undone at the seams. I am not kidding. In the last two months, I've been jumping from one place to the next, from one job to the other, from Manila to Capones Island, then back to Manila, then up to Banaue with Jose and Claire, the three of us slithering up and down the terraces, then further on to Sagada, then down to the congested avenues of Baguio City, then back to Manila, and before I could even say the word, "home", I found myself miraculously transported to my cubicle in Ortigas, still redolent of pine trees and bus-stop buko juice.

With Jose by a view of the terraces, which we have effectively blocked.



Me, Jose, and Claire, in the middle of the hike up the terraces.

In 16 hours, I'll be on my way up north again, this time for the Big Brother Big Sister hike up Kibungan, Benguet. It promises to be an incredible weekend, filled with good cheer and shiny faces and toothy grins, and my group for this climb includes beloved familiar faces, all of whom will probably try to restrain me with industrial sized ropes the moment I get drunk enough to run around the area, screaming until my throat goes to shreds.

Learn more about the program by clicking here!

It's going to be heaps of fun, oh yes! But good god, even if I were powered by Energizer batteries instead of this sputtering heart, I wouldn't last into infinity. Give me a boring weekend. Give me vacant hours and breakfast at 4 in the afternoon. Everyone knows that the Energizer bunny is a con artist! Let me be a fat-cheeked squirrel with my store of precious nuts. Hey, give me those nuts. Jose?