Meanderings....

I sit in silence in front of a computer not of my own, but that of a colleague who has taken the day off. I have been browsing the net for the better part of the day, and, at this point in time, I have about an hour or so before I finally depart for a three day weekend. I decided to log in, and type a few paragraphs about...well, about anything that comes to mind in order to while away the time. Let me see now....

The office is quiet. With one former colleague pursuing a new career in Cambodia, and two of my colleagues absent, "lively" is not a word I would use to describe the current state of being of our workplace. Amidst hushed whispers, the sound of typing, mousewheels being scrolled, and the persistent whine of the air conditioning unit, I sit here in silence...thinking to myself, and immediately transforming those random thoughts to words which I type right here...right now.

Had lunch at Shangrila earlier today with a friend. A rather "unusual" friend, if I may say so, but a pleasant companion and good friend nonetheless. :-) Bought a couple of books from National Bookstore, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Og Mandino's A Better Way to Live. I've been reading a lot of books lately...I have no real idea why, maybe I'm just looking for some inspiration...or something...or other...or maybe I just like to read. Reading can turn out to be an expensive pasttime as time goes by...as the cost of the books add up. But knowledge is priceless, I would like to think, so a good book is always a worthwhile investment.

Forty-five minutes left...what else is there to talk about? Ok, make that thirty minutes. Traded small talk with another colleague on the state of affairs of our corporation for the past fifteen minutes, with emphasis on our reorganization effort...hmmm...still a lot of questions to be answered. Only time will tell. Well, he has departed for his own cubicle, and again the office is awash in silence, except again, for the soft clacking of keyboards and the muted ring of the telephone.

More random thoughts. Two good friends from another department will be celebrating their birthdays on the 28th and on the 1st. I guess I get to eat again for free...which I seem to be able to do more often than usual lately. Reminds me of Law 40 of the 48 Laws of Power..."Despise the free lunch." I've always been partial to free lunches...I guess I ought to be more circumspect in accepting free food...:-) As the saying goes, "there's no such thing, as a free lunch."

I've always admired writers who, by the use of perfectly chosen metaphors and colorful adjectives, can make mundane objects or concepts alive in words and real in our imagination. Just like the last book I read, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. The descriptions were so vivid, I could visualize the scene in my head with such clarity. And the recipes made me hungry as well. :-) I've also wished that I had the same skill, which I try to hone in seemingly nonsensical writing...like this one for example. Sometimes I can get away with it, sometimes I don't. Take the walls of the cubicle I'm in right now. It's covered with fabric in a shade of blue which reminds me of an old shirt I once had, that got ripped a bit after it was caught on a grease covered screw on a tricycle I rode going home from a friend's house in Valenzuela. Hmmm...I guess that was too much metaphor. :-)

Okay, fifteen minutes to go. Have to sign off. Hopefully would be posting more meaningful stuff soon, not like this piece of literary crap which wastes the readers time, and hardly gets any message across if at all. If you actually finished reading this, I applaud your patience...:-)