You mad?

If you are looking at this picture coincidentally, move along please.

But if you are looking at this picture because of my novel, too bad. Gue ngga mau pasang foto Debbie makan martabak di sini, ntar bisa2 rumah gue dia bakar.

Date a girl who reads

I don't usually post something that I didn't write myself. But I found this online and I figured it was worth reposting. And no, I'm DEFINITELY not doing this because I was too lazy to write something new. This little piece of gem is titled "Date a girl who reads." 

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes. 

You guys can find the original blogpost here:
http://littlemissdorkette.tumblr.com/post/3118512524/date-a-girl-who-reads-by-rosemarie-urquico.

AND YES I PROFOUNDLY APOLOGIZE FOR NOT POSTING MY OWN WRITING BECAUSE I HAD SOMETHING URGENT TO DO. AND NO, THAT URGENT THING DEFINITELY IS NOT WATCHING CAT VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE. THANKS, BYE.

Instagram for Dummies

Disclaimer: This is not sarcastic by any mean. Any offense done or taken is probably fictional, coincidental, and not directed to any one of my readers in particular.

For those of you who are cool enough or ignorant enough to not know what Instagram is, it basically is a "social media" that lets you upload a picture (usually a picture of a meal or a selfie with the occasional scenery/inspirational quote) and put a filter on it. It doesn't matter if you have no sense of photography (like I do), by using Instagram's filters, your pictures would look like it was taken by a pro photographer.

With that being said, I always thought that Instagram was stupid, like taking pictures of food before eating it, or taking pictures of yourself with stupid filters. That is, until I decided to join Instagram myself. And then now I totally think that Instagram is retarded. The worse part is the fact that I, too, now indulge in these retarded activities. Every time I have a fancy meal, I'd stop and think about SHOULD I INSTAGRAM THIS SO PEOPLE KNOW I'M GETTING ENOUGH NUTRITION?

Anyway, after being on Instagram for I guess around a month and endless research about accounts with lots of followers, I have designed a fail-proof method on how to use Instagram for dummies.

1. Be pretty
   I know that society's view on the word "pretty" is really distorted. But I still think that this is probably the best advice I can share on doing Instagram. I followed around 100 people on my Instagram and there are accounts who have more than a thousand followers simply by being pretty. Well, and probably by repeatedly taking a thousand pictures of selfies, uploading the one they think strangers on internet would think is good enough to tell other creepy strangers to fap to that one picture you uploaded. But still, being pretty helps.
   
   
2. Take lots of selfies
   Apparently, being pretty by itself is not enough. You also need to take lots of selfies. And I do mean LOTS of them. It's a good measure, just in case your face wasn't clear enough in your previous 100 selfies. Not to mention that your followers/stalkers would like to take a closer look at your face from different angle.
   
   
3. Hashtag everything
   Now we're talking about the very soul of Instagram. I once saw a picture of a motherfucking bubble tea with like 23 hashtags. Below are the actual hashtags I found:

   #instamood. #webstagram. #bestoftheday. #instafamous. #instacool. #instafood. #foodpic. #instadaily. #instaphoto. #instaday. #foodporn. #igers. #igersoftheday. #likeforlike. #like4like. #photooftheday. #picoftheday. #urth. #caffe. #boba. #green. #tea. #black. (GOD, MANUALLY TYPING THESE HASHTAGS TOOK FOREVER).

   Or worse, I've seen a selfie with like 30 hashtags or something. Some of the hashtags are like: #girl. #girls. #asian. #asians. #selca. #selcas. #selfie. #selfies. #woman. #women. etc. It took me 10 seconds to ponder whether these people are doing social media or learning plurals. 

   More reasons to do hashtags: people all around the internet wouldn't be able to tell if you were an Asian girl if you didn't put those hashtags on your selfie. 

   Even more reasons to do hashtags: hashtagging nets you strangers on internet ogling over your picture followers. Who cares if people around you thought you're an attention whore as long as you get followers, right? Right? Right.
   
   
4. Take pictures with everyone
   If your friend looks as cute as you, well, no harm done. If your friend is uglier than you, HEYYY YOU ARE NOW THE CUTEST GIRL IN THE PICTURE. If your friend looks better than you, well, just pray like hell to God that osmosis applies to beauty, too.
   
   
5. #nofilter, #nomakeup, #justwokeupface
   This will be my last advice on Instagram. Take 100 selfies with MINIMAL (underline this word) makeup, upload the one that you think will net you compliments (which will tremendously boost your self esteem), hashtag it with #nofilter #nomakeup (feel free to throw in 30 more hashtags), and finally bask in your followers' empty compliments on how pretty you are even without any makeup or any filter. (Optional: tell them you're not pretty so you can get extra compliments)

I wish you the best of luck in your quest to conquer Instagram by seeking approvals from strangers all around the internet and happy hashtagging! 

On surviving long distance relationships

Pretty much sums up how you feel when you're in a long distance relationship.

Disclaimer: I can either be the most legit person on Earth whose advice on long distance relationship you can actually heed. Or the person whose advice you can safely ignore. It's up to you.

If opposites do attract, I must be whatever the opposite of long distance relationship is. I've only had two relationships in my entire life. And both of them were LDR (writing "long distance relationship" over and over again proved to be too much for a lazy person like me). With those two failed relationships, I can safely say that I went through the necessary prerequisites before actually writing this.

Like most (if not all) of my writings, I got this revelation when I was taking a shower. I probably should start taking 10 consecutive showers every time I'm running out of stuff to write. Anyway. 

For those of you who have never been in an LDR, trust me, it sucks. Its suck-ness ranks somewhere between 'drinking an orange juice right after brushing your teeth' and 'rubbing your eyes right after cutting an onion.' Below is a crash course on why LDR sucks.

You can't hug them. Hugs are great, but -- unless some freaky physics genius invents a way to transfer body heat between two people separated by oceans -- we're stuck with giving a cyber hug that's cute and all but doesn't accomplish any shit in satisfying our sexual urge. 

Less thing to talk about. You grew apart from them and conversely, they also grew apart from you. As if communicating via texts is not hard enough, distance gives you another reason to hate your relationship. You get to meet new people, they also get to meet new people. The intersection of the Venn diagram between "people you know" and "people they know" grows smaller with each passing day. One day, you wake up and suddenly realize that you run out of things to talk about and inevitably just stop talking to them altogether.

I can probably go on and rant about a dozen more reasons on why LDRs suck balls. But this post is not about how distance (and time) sucks. It's more about conquering them and getting your happily ever after.

During my quest on purifying my body (read: shower), I realize that humans are bad spontaneous-decision-makers. That's why we make plans before going on a trip. Or why we write down our to-buy list before going on a grocery shopping. 

I thought to myself, "Why not apply this to LDRs?" Maybe we can apply the same principle to LDR. Maybe we can write a plan before walking into an LDR. But instead of a plan, it's a letter. You might think that it's a letter addressed to them. It's not. It's a letter to our self. A reminder for our future self, to be exact. 

Here is an example of a letter I wrote to my future self about imaginary (note the stress in this word) long distance relationship. (The girl in question might or might not exist).

Is it weird that I find my eyes secretly inching towards you in the crowd? 

Is it even weirder that somehow I manage to find you without fail? It's like you got put in a 1950's television where everything is black and white while you are gleaming with your colorful clothes and cheerful expression. 

Is it weird that I forget what else my smart phones can do when you're busy?

Is it even weirder that I had this micro urge to duct tape your phone to your hand so you can always reply to my texts? (I know that I'm probably starting to sound like a fucking creep, but in my defense it was only a really small urge.)

Is it weird that I find myself checking my phone every 30 seconds hoping for a notification? 

Is it even weirder that every time my phone vibrates, I immediately turn into a fucking cheetah and grab my phone in the speed of light? If Pavlov was still alive, he probably could redo his experiment with me and a vibrating phone instead of a dog and a bell.

Is it weird that I can probably watch a two-hours-documentary-movie about you and probably be too busy to go to a restroom for even once? 

Is it even weirder that I live in a constant fear of unconsciously spouting something that I only learned from stalking you online?

Is it weird that I get this irresistible urge to pinch your cheek every time you smile?

Is it weird that I want to play with your hair every time you flip it?

Is it weird that I get butterflies in my stomach every time I see you?

Is it weird that I grin like a retard every time I hear your name?

Is it weird that I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day just so I can have more time talking to you?

Is it even weirder that I wish humans didn't need to sleep so I can have like 8 extra hours to talk to you?

Ever since I met you, I feel weird. But then again, if this is what being weird means, I wouldn't mind being the weirdest person on Earth.

By writing a letter to your future self, you're immortalizing both a moment and the feeling you had at that exact moment. And by the time you're separated by thousands of miles as well as oceans and you're running out of things to hold on to, you can always reread the letter from your past self and remember how you really felt while you were still seeing each other. When you feel like letting go, remember the reasons why you held on for so long. 

To anyone who's currently having a long distance relationship, I wish you Godspeed.

On why I started writing

No one else could have said it better than Hemingway.

You guys wouldn't believe how many people have already asked me as to why I started writing. (It's zero. The answer is zero, guys.) If only some of you guys had asked me about why I started writing, I could have started this blog by saying "I'm writing this just to clear out the confusion that some people seem to have developed about my writing," WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN WAY COOLER THAN THE WAY I STARTED THIS POST. I hate you guys.

To be honest, I had no idea why I started blogging. Some people seemed to get the idea that this blog was my first blog. It's not. I have already tried blogging for at least three times and the first two failed miserably. 

If I had to take a guess, I probably started blogging because I once read that women like a guy who is funny (and for some reason I thought that by writing, I could be funnier). Half a year after I started blogging, I read another article saying that a guy's smell matters more to women than his appearance. If I had known about this earlier, I probably would have started working (instead of writing) to buy a shitload of perfume. 

But now that I have been writing (somewhat) constantly for more than a year, I have developed a Stockholm Syndrome; writing is now an essential part of me. You see, one of my writing friends think of writing as breathing. I wouldn't exactly go as far as to say that. If I had to come up with an activity as to what writing is to me, I would probably describe it as peeing. Unless you go to a hospital every two hours and ask a doctor to extract pee from your bladder, peeing is necessary for everyone. I can hold my pee in for a few hours but then I would eventually have to relieve myself in a restroom. Peeing empties my bladder the same way that writing does to my brain. 

I love writing. Writing is fun; it lets you see the world in a whole new way and gives you a mean to describe it in 26 different letters. 

If you're a woman, you should try writing. It's the only way to talk without getting interrupted. And if you're a man, you should also try writing. It's like being a God minus the blasphemy. 

With that out of the way, I'd like to share some of the stories that I've written in my writing classes I took in college.

My (un-edited) first short story: here. (Warning: I wrote this in a writing class during my second semester in college and it sucked. Read ahead at your own risk.) I wrote this story because I had to (not because I wanted to) and I wrote most of it in dialogue. At that time, I didn't even know that description existed. I actually really like the idea behind this story and I swear one day I'll rewrite this story with proper punctuation.

My second story: here. I wrote this in a writing class during my last semester in college and I actually kinda like the way it went. I was told to write a story and for some odd reason, I wanted to write a love story. While the end product isn't exactly the happiest love story, I'm pretty satisfied with it. It's a story told backwards in alternating guy's and girl's perspective.

As for the title of this blog, it was inspired by a poem that I also wrote in my last writing class. The poem goes like:

An Egoist's Rant

I woke up to the sound of
high-pitched beeps. The kind of beeps you heard
when you bought something from a clothing store
and the cashier forgot to ring it
so you walked past the sensor with the tags still on the clothes. 

Seven beeps, or was it eight? were all it took to wake me up. How I managed to
count them, was one of my many useless talents God threw in when He made me.
I lay in bed for a few more seconds, before deciding that the annoying beeps
outweighed my urge to stay cocooned under my cloud-like blanket. 

I threw my perfectly white blanket with a large black coffee mark that wouldn't disappear after countless number of laundering (I gave up counting somewhere after 30 times) off me
and walked toward my alarm clock. I slapped it right on its head. 

I dragged myself into shower
undressed and twisting the shower knob precisely. 

30 degree to the left. I started as the shower head spat water and grazed my skin.
Cold. Freezing cold. 

I started counting at the top of my head. One, two, three...Before I managed to count to ten, steam from warm water started to fill the bathroom. 

Did I say warm?
Sorry, I meant hot. Mordor-hot.Another 10-degree-twist to the right, and that should do it. 

As I stood under the now-warm water like a writer waiting for inspiration to hit,
my mind began to wander about how many people could afford a shower
like this. Like the one I was having.
Children in Ethiopia had to walk for six straight hours to collect some water to drink,
surely they couldn't afford a shower like this. I silently thanked the Captain Obvious in my head. 

My mind began to wander everywhere else as I mindlessly wash my body.
I frantically told my mind to stop thinking about how this foamy fat was made.
Did I wash my hair already? I pulled my hair and it squeaked. I guessed I already did. 

I toweled myself to dry
and a silent curse slipped under my breath.
I cursed that it's another Monday to survive.
I cursed and cursed that it's another 5 days to endure
before I could get back to my weekend.

I agree that it's not the best poem. But when I decided to blog, the title "An Egoist's Rant" just kinda stuck to my head and so I chose to make it as my blog title.

I do hope this post answers all of your questions. 

Bottom line: if you guys are interested in writing and (for some odd reason) look up to me as your role model in writing (please don't), then by all means, start writing. Explain the world to the world itself by your stained glasses using your very own combination of 26 letters. Happy writing!