SEASON OF LOVE

Having gotten over The Buzz (it’s just not the same without Kris Aquino), I have a new guilty pleasure. Late at night, whenever I can’t sleep, I go to Craigslist.org and read the personals. Adult content aside, I find myself fascinated by three sections in particular: strictly platonic, where seemingly sane and serious and perhaps shy people look for new friends to throw off their routine; rants and raves, where the less predictable ones seem to converge, like this guy from New York who suspects his girlfriend to have had a not-so-moral job and seeks advice from people who’ve been down his multicultural relationship road before, and they offer him strange but strangely sound advice too; and, my favorite, missed connections.

In missed connections, I find both hope and sadness. One guy is looking for the beautiful and friendly Filipina who served him at McDonald’s and gave him a pretty smile. I find it a little bit sad that people—and I’ve been there, believe me—can instantly “feel” a connection towards someone for the silliest things because it can only mean a certain amount of emptiness or loneliness inside.

Another guy is hoping to find a girl based in San Francisco that he met in Boracay. He had asked for her email address before they parted, but he forgot it because they had been drinking and, well, such things happen if you’d been drinking. “Nothing has ever felt so right in my life,” he wrote, and of course that makes me want to help him find her!

My favorite type of post often involves a guy who was too shy to talk to a girl he saw in a mall/restaurant/cafe or on the bus/plane/train, and now he’s hoping that she’s on Craigslist and will recognize him through his message of regret. Missed connections, indeed!

Craigslist appeals to my sense of fantasy. I pick up snippets of boy-meets-girl scenarios and my imagination goes wild. Adult content aside.

I think a Craigslist love story would be kind of nice.

Valentine, Schmalentine

How was your Valentine’s Day? For my part, I was glad it was a Monday, and I stayed until midnight at work, avoiding the crazy traffic. Part of my music playlist pretty much summed up my last romance:

“This Never Happened Before” by Paul McCartney

“The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani, featuring Akon

“Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie

“Cool” by Gwen Stefani

“Sentimental Lady” by Fleetwood Mac (okay, my age is showing)

Truth be told, though, I don’t really put much premium on this non-holiday. Even the Catholic Church doesn’t have any reliable information on the saint we’re supposedly celebrating. It has become a sort of trite joke to pretend to be heartbroken on a day that shuts out singles.

I honestly don’t care! Perhaps I used to care when I was a teenager, but I haven’t been that for, er, a long time.

But for the record: It still would be nice to have someone though, Valentine’s Day or not.

Rent Is Back

One of my favorite more popular musicals is back in Manila. It opened on February 12 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, in Makati City. The cast includes Gian Magdangal (as Roger), Gian’s real-life girlfriend Sheree Bautista (as Mimi), and Carla Guevara-Laforteza (as Maureen).

It runs from February 12 to March 6, 2011, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 8pm and Saturdays at 3:30pm and Sundays at 4:30pm.

I love Rent because it basically sums up the way I’ve been trying to live my life: “Measure your life in love.”

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