If I wanted, I could

I took advantage of the holiday on Tuesday to book a stay at Valero Grand Suites for the week. I liked the idea of walking to and from work for both office days, and I could spend the rest of the time on personal writing projects and ordering in from places I’ve always wanted to try since the area gives me a wider range of choices. 

Finding out about their half-off offer has been dangerous for me since I want to stay there all the time now. I love the double rooms since the beds are huge, and one is always set against the window, where there’s this elevated space wide and comfortable enough to be a desk if you sit at the end of the bed. It offers views of the Lepanto Building, flanked by my own office building at Ayala Triangle Gardens. There’s also a full-size fridge that comes with an ice tray and a microwave, which is perfect for making sure I get to eat without taking too much time away from the stuff I want to get done. 

On the first day I walked to the nearby 7-Eleven after checking in to stock up on drinks and some of their ready-to-eat meals. It started raining on my walk back, but the sidewalk is fully covered so I got to experience the downpour without getting wet. 

Stuff I tried from 7-Eleven through my stay: the black forest cake slice, which was really good and full of cherry flavor; the breakfast sausage patty with rice, eggs, and mini pancakes; the cheesedog onigiri; and the crispy shrimp balls with garlic aioli. 

On Wednesday I got up at 9:30 (the usual time I arrive at the office, from having gotten up at 6:45 at home!) and showed up to work at a little past ten. Before heading back I stopped at the Marketplace downstairs, where I ran into a high school classmate and found this adorable red panda popsicle—the dark brown is hazelnut, light brown is coffee, and the little pink peaches are of course peach-flavored.  

I ordered in from Flipside Burgers and got the one with bacon jam, cream cheese, and fried onions, which might be my favorite burger in Manila right now. I also got some sliders for snacking or later meals. I got a cookies and cream cake and seafood cream pasta from Sweet Inspirations. Again, I’m a little too particular about cream-based pastas and it’s much more likely that I end up not liking something I’m trying for the first time, but this one had a good texture and flavor and I’m glad I had it. 

I had to take on double (honestly, triple) duty at work and it wasn’t very fun. The day ended at around seven or eight, and we had dinner at Purple Rice in Salcedo. I got the grilled angus beef belly with nutty Thai BBQ sauce, and I’m obsessed with it. I finished half and got the rest to go, which I had for breakfast the next day. 

It was nice to walk back to the hotel at night. I haven’t been journaling by hand for a while, just writing about my days in my mood tracker but I’ve been too lazy to be detailed about it, so I wanted to put some of my feelings here. This week kind of left me feeling lonely and grasping at notions of belonging. Work has been a lot since last June and there are a lot of frustrations. I have friends to commiserate and carry it with, but at dinner I was listening to them share about how they’ve been talking with their parents or how their parents have been supporting them and it just struck me: I used to have that too, and now I don’t anymore, and never will again. It was so easy to imagine what my parents would’ve said, and how comforting it would’ve been. But I’ll never know for sure. 

So my supposedly chill workcation week got clouded over with some fun little depression side quest that didn’t really subside for a couple of days, but getting to do what I wanted and get some good food helped. 

Friday I didn’t have to come to the office anymore, but it was still a work day, so I set up a desk on the large counter space next to the TV and drew the curtains for lots of natural light, which I don’t get a lot of at home. For the rest of the day I watched Something Very Bad is Going to Happen in one sitting, since we just got the screeners for work. 

On Saturday, my last full day, I ordered Umi Sushi as a final treat for myself. 

I think it’s pretty affordable since you get eight huge rolls per order. The first kind I got was the salmon aburi, with cream cheese and chopped cucumber and a topping of torched salmon, a creamy sauce with aonori powder, and tobiko. This one was really fresh and filling and sated the part of me that’s been craving salmon for a few days. 

I found the dynamite roll adorable with its tiny panko-deep-fried topper roll of minced unagi, kani, and cream cheese. The main roll had torched fresh salmon and cream cheese, with chili mayo. 

See what I mean about the desk-esque space by the window? I spent Saturday doing some reading for research, and at night I turned out all the lights and sat facing the night sky and the beautiful buildings while I organized my notes into a semi-coherent outline. This story has been haunting me for a couple of years and I’ve been so scared to touch it since it features sports and it’s important for me to strike the balance of making sure it’s well-integrated into the plot while knowing next to nothing about it. I didn’t get as much done as I’d been planning, but I think I finally know what to do with it and most importantly how. It’s definitely progress, and I can’t wait to go further.  

I checked out early the next morning and went over to Ate Inah’s place so we could go together to where we’re having her birthday lunch. 

Was it just a ploy so I could execute my ulterior motive of seeing Fifi and giving him all the pets? Who’s to say. 

This time he actually laid still and let me pet him after giving my hand the perfunctory sniff test. When I got up he kept stopping at my feet and rolling around, showing his stomach to me! And later, when I got out my bag of Chips Delight cookies to snack a little, he climbed onto the couch to beg for some, but of course I had to turn him down. 

Lunch was at Azadore in the Scout area, but I got too lazy to take proper photos by then, so have some more of Fifi. It’s a gorgeous place, another repurposed midcentury modern home with plenty of private dining areas at no additional cost. Perfect for family celebrations, and I wished my parents were there as usual. 

My favorites from our meal: all the paellas, the lengua, the truffle penne, the pork belly with aioli, the toasted baguette with compound butter, and the churros. It was nice to close off my week alone with my larger nuclear family. 

(Less nice when I got home and finally counted up the damage on my expense tracker. I don’t want this to be a habit, but maybe it can be a seasonal thing.) 

Lately I've become aware

There are a lot of cool things that I get to do at my job, but I get so caught up in the day-to-day that it doesn't really occur to me to blog about them or document them properly. But I was going through my photos and it brought me back to how much I loved getting to experience certain parts of a shoot, so I thought I'd gush about it here.

I think my favorite location we've ever had for a shoot would have to be this mid-century modern home along West Avenue, which we used for One Hit Wonder. We don't get to shoot on location often (at least I haven't, but we've done set visits involving road trips and everything) and I just fell in love with all of the secrets begging to be discovered in the house. It looked like a chic '70s bungalow from the outside, but there's a kind of loft leading to the bedrooms, and our area was in the basement. My parents would've loved the warm wood, high asymmetrical ceiling, and that insane glass block window. 

Part of what made the set so warm and beautiful was the production design, of course, but the house itself had plenty of character all its own. The holding area was right by this huge collection of DVDs both authentic and pirated, including countless local titles like Booba and Sigaw. I can't say it enough: OBSESSED. There are also different knick-knacks like a life-size bust of Marilyn Monroe, a sword, some vintage cameras, and elaborate miniature boats and planes. 

Not the most well-framed picture, but I wanted to show that they also had this record player and telephone. 

For this season of Bida/Bida, we literally managed to pull off an episode reuniting both Juday and Gladys and Marvin and Jolina—not the easiest feat considering difficulties with scheduling almost drove us all up the wall trying to come up with new combinations of stars and compromises. But I was almost more starstruck getting to "meet" a real, live glambot. It was super cool to see in action, and we made use of sequences that were more complicated than your average red-carpet shot for our intro. Writing this now, the way we used the robot arm actually reminds me of how it was applied to j-hope's "MORE" music video. (It's also kind of scary since the equipment is massive and heavy and makes a lot of noise and quick movements that will make you take a couple of steps back.) 

My second-favorite set from last year was this gorgeous teal greenhouse for It's Okay to Not Be Okay. The entire cast was so fun and gracious, each of them stepping into our holding area to introduce themselves, and everyone looked so good. Anne Curtis was a total sweetheart, and one of the concepts I was most proud of was this one where Anne and her character Mia "meet face-to-face." I loved getting to see what the process of shooting The Parent Trap must've been like, as well as the way Anne seamlessly snapped into character as Mia, and then as herself. (It was also past midnight, but she was a trooper and a pro the whole time.)  

This one's from 2024, but I think I definitely need to highlight the experience of getting to work with and directing KATSEYE through a few quick concepts.

Daniela was closest to me so it was easy to keep defaulting to her. For the "OA or Nonchalant" concept she took to saying "OA" like a Filipino so well, partly because Sophia was so insistent that everyone get the pronunciation right. Sophia was a true professional and leader (and theater actress offspring!) and greeted everyone in the room brightly upon entering. Manon was so pretty and refined, Yoonchae was shy and adorable but still very game, and Megan was unflappable and cool. Lara was kind of like part of the leader line and kept everyone's energy up. They were all glowing even after several hours of work straight from the airport.

We celebrated with dinner at China Blue, where I ordered the deep fried soft shell crab and shrimp with calamansi and mango sauce that had the perfect amount of kick, and I still think about it all the time.  

(We shot a group pic with them, and I was off to the side. I saved it off the Instagram of someone from another department that I'm not really close with, and in it I'm literally cut in half, but I just never got around to asking for the full high-quality photo. Still, whatever, I know what I see when I look at it, and the whole thing makes me laugh.) 

I didn’t care about little things when I was young and dumb

We never had a junior prom. 

That was the year Ondoy hit Manila and flooded my house knee-deep, causing water damage to beautiful wooden furniture we wouldn’t have it in our hearts—or pockets—to replace for years. We had a nook outside by the gate that was only there because there was nowhere else to put it, table and all, and that was where we ate our dinner, candlelit but not quite something to romanticize. This is just like Villa Escudero, we joked anyway, remembering the restaurant we had dined at that was next to a waterfall. Pretending the current at our feet was anything but rainwater and devastation. My dad and I walked around our neighborhood the next day, surveying the destruction the typhoon left in its wake. 

Months later, the administration of my high school would announce that in light of recent events, they wouldn’t be holding the annual junior-senior prom. It was done out of respect for the victims, they reasoned, and there were also budgeting concerns because the school suffered its fair share of damages. 

I don’t think about it these days, but once in a while it would come back to me. At the time most of the students would talk about it like it was the end of the world. Part of it didn’t make sense to me—couldn’t there have been a compromise, especially for the seniors? Now, though, it’s just another little anomaly about my adolescence that makes for a good conversation starter: One year, we skipped the prom. As in, we didn’t hold one.

I always meant to skip my junior prom anyway. The idea of dressing up stressed me out, I didn’t dance, it wasn’t worth such a hefty expense. I thought it would be cooler to hold an Anti-Prom Party as an act of nonconformity instead. At the time my favorite movie had been 10 Things I Hate About You and I fancied myself akin to Kat Stratford, was never one to go starry-eyed when it came time for the prom scene in a teen movie regardless. Not even with Heath Ledger in a tux and Letters to Cleo performing “Cruel to Be Kind” in the background. 

But senior year was different—this time, I wanted it all. To satisfy the curiosity of what it was like, to have this last hurrah.

The truth is, I barely remember much of the prom I did get to have. I’ve lived twice the life I had at sixteen, after all. I have no idea why I don’t have a single picture either. When I look back on it, I think of how beautiful my friends all looked and how I wished I could always keep them with me. And did you really go to high school in the late aughts/early tens if your prom playlist didn’t include “Can I Have This Dance?” from High School Musical 3 and “So Close” from Enchanted? 

It was also a night of so many firsts for me. First time shaving my legs. First time curling my hair. First time wearing contacts, which I ditched within weeks and never tried again because I thought I lost one while applying them one morning and turned out it had been sucked into and stuck inside my eye socket the whole day. 

First dance after first dance, including one with the boy I’d written most of my lovelorn poetry about. We’d drifted to each other’s sides like we hadn’t even been thinking about it, pulling together into something that couldn’t decide whether it was a waltz or a slow dance. His hand hovered at my waist, but the other was warm and solid in my own, and we avoided eye contact until we had to part. Don’t ask me what song was playing—I wouldn’t have even been able to tell the morning after.

Months later I would see Prom, the utterly forgettable and mostly forgotten movie, in the cinema on my break. I was completely alone in the theater, the sole ticket sold, and it was an interesting enough experience that I started a new blog and wrote about it as soon as I got home. That blog became a place for me to develop my writing voice and document my teenage years. By then, I was a freshman in university, and it hardly even occurred to me that my own prom wasn’t even all that long ago. It had been only four months, but everything in my life was different, and for once I wasn’t dwelling on the past. 

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to finish this. None of this had been on my mind in years, until one day I recalled that little blip when I was fifteen where tragedy struck and our prom was canceled, except the tragedy wasn’t hyperbole and had nothing to do with the prom. But there’s one thing I really wanted to write about, and it’s this: 

My prom dress was born out of a magazine clipping, an ad in Vogue for Louis Vuitton’s Fall 2010 collection. Three women primping and preening in a dressing room wearing gorgeous dresses with vintage silhouettes. One of them had her hands at her waist, and immediately I knew that she was wearing my prom dress: Sabrina neckline, sleeves up to her elbows, sheer bodice and delicate layers. 

My mom and I went to a house somewhere in Novaliches or Fairview, the torn-out magazine page clutched in my hands, so we could have a designer recreate the dress. Midnight blue lace and a bubbly, swishy layered skirt, so it would look less like I was attending a funeral. (My mom’s words.) I’d never been so excited. It turned out so beautiful. 

We borrowed a clutch from my aunt, and we searched for the perfect shoes at the mall: rounded toes, wedge heels for comfort, gleaming with gem accents all over. I would wear them around the house before the big day, head spinning with images of my new life as someone who actually wore heels instead of ballet flats and Converse. 

So much of that night was about me becoming a new person. I was graduating high school soon, I was finding my identity and independence, I was growing up. 

Only, not just yet. My parents drove to the fancy country club banquet hall to pick me up. The first thing I removed was my corsage, as soon as I saw them. They brought me flip-flops and helped me out of my heels. My curls flattened out. I had the contact lens incident not long after. My dress was tucked away in a closet, but it might as well have been permanent storage. And as for the shoes? It wasn’t long before I never saw them again. 

I went right back to my Buddy Holly glasses and my rotation of flats and sneakers, but that didn’t mean I stopped trying to discover who I could become—they were just part of who I was, and they weren’t all I had to be. By then I knew better than to box myself in. And, wow, if that isn’t the most Kat Stratford thing of all.