Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s funny. Yesterday was probably the day I got the most number of text messages at one time. I’m not a cell phone person to begin with. I know that a social life in Metro Manila is impossible without a cellphone, and I love how it comes in handy when I have to locate my friends, or plan last-minute movie trips or house raids with them. But that’s about it. If I’m not looking for my friends, or if my friends or my mom aren’t looking for me, I can go for as long as a week without even glancing at the damn thing. I don’t look for textmates, I don’t send out cheesy inspirational quotes, graphics, or chain letters that promise divine intervention or true love if I pass it on to a certain number of people. During breaks, when everyone else is pretty much doing their own thing, I can go for as long as three days without getting a single text message from anyone. Which is why I don’t even bother checking my cellphone when school’s out.

Last night, I thought I’d say “Merry Christmas” to a few friends. I haven’t looked at my cellphone since the previous night and it took me a while to locate the damn thing, which was buried somewhere below all the crap I dump on my bean bag. When I unlocked the keypad, my eyes widened and I was like, “Holy crap! 35 new messages!” From 30 or so different people, some of whom rarely ever text me. Whoa. What’s more, I kept on getting messages up until way past midnight. I grew kind of lazy to send replies to the people who sent me greetings, and kept putting it off until around midnight. But by the time the clock struck twelve, I had a hard time sending messages to anyone. So it’s true–the network really does get busy with everyone wishing everyone else Merry Christmas and all. As my irrtation grew with every “message sending failed”, something occured to me. What use will a cellphone have during a huge calamity like, let’s say, the end of the world? There are so many people I’d like to say my last goodbyes to but I won’t be able to because network will be busy with everyone will be saying their last goodbyes to everyone. And if you can’t even contact your loved ones when you want to, where you want to, then that defeats the entire purpose of having a cellphone.

Christmas day was decent. My cousins came over and we pretty much spent the entire day eating, opening presents, and hanging out. (View Daily Grind/Photolog). I got a lot of cool stuff from my family and friends–thank you. Now my cousins are gone and I am now facing a pretty big dilemma: what to do during the next five days. Our film project was moved to the summer because our lovely director will be at Batangas until the New Year. This leaves me with absolutely no plans until the 30th, and it annoys me because I was counting on doing something productive. It looks like I’ll be living the life of a bum again because these are the only things I can think of doing. I could call up my high school friends and have lunch and a movie with them, call up my friends in the village and hang out at their place, or go to Makati Cinema Square for video games and secondhand book and spend those five days just escaping from reality. I don’t mind escapism and I don’t mind seeing my friends again. But…argh. I hate feeling like I’m useless.