“Gloria, Gloria…”

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Back from church! Despite my poor rest last night, today has been an invigorating day, praising and glorifying God in song and worship. Just one more week to the Christmas cantata at GCF South Metro! Any of you reading this, I have free tickets: four for the 3pm matinee and four more for the 7pm gala. Interested?

No irony is lost on the choir that the theme song of our cantata (which goes, “Gloria, Gloria, Glory to God on high!”) is also the name of our country’s upstart vice-president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is actively campaigning to unseat the current incompetent-in-power, Erap Estrada. Especially funny is what I call the “prophetic” last line of the anthem: “So rise and shine, your light has come, praise the Chosen One… Gloria!!!” Of course we’re talking about the glory of Christ’s birth here, but it sure sounds like Gloria is the “chosen one,” doesn’t it?

If I could change our anthem, I probably would, considering the political situation. Then again, perhaps I wouldn’t. = )

Hardly slept.

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Hardly slept.

And the shower was icy cold.

Can’t sleep.

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I’m songleading at church tomorrow, but I can’t sleep. Must sleep. Must… sleep… Ugh. I can’t.

Orange kitten!

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It’s been a good day. On my way to choir practice this morning, I saw the cutest orange kitten downstairs from my apartment. And he was soooo sweet, rubbing up against my hand and purring and being a generally cute dear. Aawww!!! I wanna cat of my own. But it’s not allowed in my apartment, and even then I’m not sure I have the time to care for one. (I did harbor a stray kitten once a few months ago, but she disappeared after two nights.)

Choir practice was fun. We spent the afternoon rehearsing and preparing for the Christmas cantata, complete with choreography, and it’s coming together nicely, praise God. We’re singing on Dec. 10. That’s just a week to go!

Right now I’m listening to Handel’s Tochter Zion. It sounds remarkably like a song we sang in my Catholic church choir way back in high school: Canticorum Jubilo. Whoops, the track’s over. That was fast. Just 53 seconds. Now it’s a rather slow rendition of Torelli’s Concerto in Gm Op. 8 No. 6. I think I’ll go back to this thing by Schmelzer: Sonata per chiesa et camera. Aaaahh, that’s nice. Strings, brass, and timpanis are always pleasant to listen to. I shall now get off the web and settle into bed to read Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince, while a cool, rainy night wind blows outside my window. G’night!

Tropical depression

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It’s raining outside. A tropical depression creeped up on our country from below, positioned itself over the middle south of the archipelago, and promptly stopped moving. Now it is indiscreetly flooding out villages and people on the islands of Visayas and Mindanao, and dumping rain on Manila. And stupid me, while the first drops hadn’t yet fallen this morning, I forgot to wear a raincoat. Fortunately my spare umbrella was in my bag.

I had an inspiring flash of enlightenment about the New Testament verse in Hebrews on the danger of falling away, and how it relates to our eternal security and the unfailing love of God. I’ll post my discoveries here sometime.

Fistful of leaves

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This page looks ugly in Netscape 4.7. And the style sheets don’t work right. That’s okay. I know the problem isn’t my page; it’s Netscape! The problem’s always Netscape if it’s version 4.x. Any Netscape 6 users out there? How does the page look?

Mobile [ 11/28/2000 6:29 pm ]

I’m walking down De la Rosa Street, having just left the office. Weird: I just saw a man grab a fistful of leaves from a sidewalk shrub and eat them. He looked pretty normal, and was holding a binder. (Okay, okay, he grabbed the leaves from the shrub just as I was overtaking him, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him putting his hand to his mouth. Maybe he was just smelling the leaves. But it looked more like he was eating them.)

Bump in the night

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Ugh, woke up late this morning because of my apartment-mate. I’m really glad he’s in the other room and not in mine, because he’s one of those types who usually forgets there are other people in the same time zone.

Last night — or rather, early this morning at around 3 am — I was awakened by some rather loud scraping and creaking. He was moving furniture around his room. At 3 am in the morning, making the whole apartment vibrate with the noise. I can imagine how the poor girls downstairs must have felt, hearing beds being dragged around over their heads.

And yelling into the phone. He always yells into the phone. Whenever he talks to someone on the phone, he literally screams. Don’t ask me why. Neither he nor any of his friends and workmates are hearing-impaired or angry at him. He just raises his voice by multiples when talking to someone on the phone. Of course that means everyone in the apartment can hear his conversations, like it or not.

Watching movies. With the volume cranked up to full. Past midnight, when everyone’s sleeping. I had to knock on his door and tell him to turn it down. Sigh. He’s on the phone again right now. I’d better get to work.

Manipulating the Fickle Masses

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Lots of anti-Erap rallies happening this week. Several groups from rural areas outside Manila are supposed to be converging on the city on Wednesday for a big one. And rich folk are hosting a free “People Power Lunch” for anti-Erap rallyists at the Ayala-Paseo intersection. Ha! Using Erap’s own pang-masa tactics against him. Maybe that, combined with the next day being a holiday, will build up the critical mass of people needed for a genuine people’s revolution. Estrada can’t keep banking on the fickle, fast-dwindling support of the masses forever to keep him in power. The cluelessly corrupt presidency has to end ASAP. If he resigns before he gets impeached, so much the better.

After choir practice

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We had choir practice for the Christmas cantata today, and yay, we finally finished the choreography for the whole piece! Now we just have to get down to memorizing it.

After getting home and performing my daily ablutions, I committed myself to some serious quiet time with the Lord, which I haven’t really done in earnest for a while. I admit, it’s one of those days when God doesn’t really feel particularly close — all the more reason, then, to get down on my knees and talk to him. So I got down on my knees and prayed, then settled into bed with my bible and read the whole gospel of Luke, just to refresh myself a bit on Jesus’ life. Feel close to him or not, I believe faithful prayer will truly work wonders.

And now, here I am, blogging while I moderate Realm of Thought in another window. I should get to sleep. G’night.

First mobile blog

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Mobile [ 11/25/2000 1.14 pm ] I am blogging from my cellphone while I wait in Jollibee. (Actually, I texted an abbreviated outline message to my email address, and now I’m copying, pasting and filling out the abbreviations in Blogger.) Today is not a fastfood day. For lunch in Alabang Town Center, I decided to try the newly reopened Carl’s Jr, then quickly left upon seeing the exorbitant prices: as much as P125 for a simple sandwich meal!

So I went to Subway, but an induhvidual in the line wanted to know if he could have roast beef and turkey breast in the same sandwich without having to pay extra. Then, when the attendant had put it on the bread already, he changed his mind and decided he wanted a different kind of bread. I left.

So here I am in Jollibee. And, stupid me, I order a Cheezy Bacon Mushroom burger, forgetting that you almost always have to wait for a Cheezy Bacon Mushroom in Jollibee. Now I’m waiting. That and the fries. Number 45. Murphy’s Law seems to be having some sort of field day.