On Tuesday night

We leave work early today because my officemates have to catch Karate Kid at 6.30. The tickets are free (c/o my boss) but I don't go with them because I won't enjoy their company but mainly because I'm still feeling unwell. Also, I don't have any money. I have like 58 pesos in my pocket and that's just enough for dinner. I hate being poor. I check my bank account to see if mom sent me some money like she said she would yesterday. She didn't. I have like 288 pesos in the bank and I try to take out the 200 but it won't fucking let me. The receipt tells me that 200 is "less than the minimum withdrawal amount" so I tell the receipt to go fuck itself and tear it up. As I'm walking from the bank to EDSA I'm feeling mad. I'm feeling mad and also a bit sad. I'm sad because I'm sick and I'm poor and I should be watching Karate Kid for free but I'm not. I don't want to go to the cinema and not have money to buy popcorn or a Blizzard from Dairy Queen. When I was in college I always had a Blizzard whenever I watched a movie. I always get one of the chocolate flavors. I haven't had a Blizzard in a long time but I won't get one now. Firstly because I've a sore throat and secondly because I don't have any fucking money.

When I get to Megamall it's very very noisy. Like I'm trying to concentrate all my energy on just making it home because each step makes me feel the tiredness in my body. But the buses aren't helping they're honking so insistently and it's so fucking loud like someone put a trumpet to my ear and blew on it. It's an insistent in your face sound that I can't get rid of and I wonder if it would go away if I close my eyes. So I close my eyes and it does help. I'm walking with my eyes closed and it doesn't matter that I can't see where I'm going because I can feel the people, their energy is stamped on my eyelids like neon and I'm floating through them. I'm walking with my eyes closed and I almost walk into traffic luckily I bump into a couple walking by. The man throws me a dirty look so I throw him my winningest smile but he's already walked past me and I'm smiling at nothing.

I change tack and try walking with my stoic face. My stoic face is expressionless, jaws clenched, teeth grinding, and a blank glassy stare. The jaws part is pretty easy, I can feel that throbbing on my cheeks that happens when I clench my teeth but I'm not sure if I pull off the eyes part. Maybe I do because I see people who meet my stare recoil. They quickly avert their eyes as if they'd just seen me naked. Maybe they have.

When I get to Libertad I start thinking about what I should have for dinner. I can stop by one of the cafeterias and blow all of my money on one meal but that won't be so smart because I don't know if my sister's gonna pay me back tomorrow and I can't make it through the day without something to eat in the morning. Crackers from the office pantry don't count. I decide that it's better to buy canned tuna instead. I love tuna anyway. It might even get a Superbod from eating lots of canned tuna, like the commercials say. That's something I so desperately want to believe in but I know it's not true. It's a lie, just like everything else advertising trys to sell you. Advertising is just so fucking fucked up I so want to believe that some of what I see on TV is true but it never is. Whenever I give up my trust I inevitably get shafted, like when I had really bad dandruff so I switched to Clear but the dandruff didn't go away. So is the lesson here never to trust anyone? Wrong. Just don't trust your TV. You can trust Google and Wikipedia but not all the time.

At the supermarket I debate buying corned tuna or afritada-flavored tuna. 330g of afritada tuna costs 22 pesos while corned tuna is 24.75 pesos so guess what I buy. Yeah, I have no more money but I buy two cans of the corned tuna because hey, I've never tried this before, and also, fuckit, if my sister still won't pay me back tomorrow then I'm just gonna suck it up and be sad about not having anything to eat. So I go and pay for the tuna and as usual I tell the lady at the counter not to put it in a plastic bag (yes folks, please get in the habit of refusing those plastic bags. I mean come on, you've got your bag with you, and what you're buying will fit just right in there. what do you need the plastic bag for anyway? to contribute to the number of birds dying because they choked on plastic bags floating in the sea?) and since I don't have a plastic bag I just hold on to them for the rest of the walk home. I don't think that looks weird at all.

When I get home I get some rice going in the rice cooker and it ended up burnt as usual. But before the rice ends up burnt, while it's still cooking, I have a smoke, I wash a shirt for tomorrow, I have a beer, and I try to write this down. And then the rice is done and I put the tuna on top for a bit and then I have dinner. 

Corned tuna tastes like regular fucking tuna.