Valentine's Day/Night

When I was in highschool, I used to feel really bad about Valentine's Day. It was that one day when you went to school and found all of the cute boys (which in my case meant the half-retarded, nerdy musicians) giving flowers to these girls with perfect skin who never seemed to have it in them to feel anything or at least show that they felt anything. China dolls.

Over the years though, my relationship with Valentine's Day has become more apathetic but at the same time, strangely more meaningful and enjoyable--kind of like Father's Day or Mother's day, it's become less about the occasion itself and more about celebrating or remembering something: love, friendship, fuzziness.

I spent Valentine's Day 2012 at Conspiracy Garden Cafe (yes, in Quezon City) with my dear friends Marz, Trish, Joy and 'ze lover boy, Keavin. Quite a stressful day before then--work and then the long trip to Quezon City. Traffic makes me anxious so I was really cranky and then really antsy until we got to Keav's school to pick him up--Carlos' horror stories about "leaving at 6 and getting there, everything was done already" were enough to fuel my paranoia. 

But we got there on time, thank God. Very nice place, Conspiracy. I want a garden like that in my future home. The poetry reading was very nice. I was the first reader--which was a good thing, I think because I was very, very nervous and it was nice to have a smaller, more intimate group of people listening as opposed to well, lots of people. I was glad that lots of people seemed to like the work. Thank you, guys! The other readers were amazing as well; I was very glad to hear Andrea Gibson's poetry recited, kudos to Kim and Carlos, I could never do what they do. Hope to hear more original poetry (slam or otherwise) from you guys. :)

Me reading shiz

Sirs Allan Popa and Joel Toledo were there too and read some of their work. Very, very nice stuff.

The event itself ended around 9:00 pm, so we all moved to the garden area. Joy, Marz and Trish headed to Baliwag next door while Keav and I hung out with Carlos, Joelle, Raph, Lorri and a lot of other people. It was nice catching up with people I don't see everyday, too like Noel, Demi and Chris (who everyone seems to call Chubz nowadays). Congratulations to Noel, Carlos and Demi who got published in the recent issue of Malate Literary Folio (which was also launched last night). 

Capped off the night by the long but fast (no traffic, bitchnitz) ride from Visayas Avenue to San Juan to Merville to Alabang. <33

Conspiracy's garden area

Raph about to say something obscene to Ysa and her man-love

Lastly, must give credit for the photo of me reading to Marz. She is getting very into lomography and other photo ventures. If anyone is interested, you can check her out here.