Arctic Beetle

It’s been days since I recognized why being sent to the world beyond purgatory is a disaster. The heat coupled with the dark environment and lack of electric fans sounds more hell-like than suffering something equivalent to my sins. It’ll be like prancing around Manila in midday with only your everyday get-up or, incurring death unknowingly via heat stroke.

The daily thermometer readings inside my room average to 35.8 degree Celsius; that is approximately 1.2 units away from the normal human body temperature. Being off from the reach of nearest source of air, may it be hot or cold, for 2 seconds can make my sweat glands active as the most hyperactive child you know. Even when I take a bath, it seems to me that the rate at which my body produces sweat is in equilibrium with the speed the water from the shower hose gushes. I am more and more inclined to think that I am probably losing an appreciable amount of fat due to the weather. On the downside, the situation of my face hangs variably between being chapped and excessively sebaceous. Gross, yes.

A 5-second exposure to the sun can cause my complexion to turn two or three shades down the gradient. The sun’s visible affection for my skin is more fiery than a kiss and is suitably named as sun-burnt. Calling out to all the artists out there, my wide array of skin tones is open for palette-referencing.

There should be a primary cause to this and right now, I am trying to think of reasons less lame than global warming. Then again, Philippines is a tropical country.

I need an everyday supply of buko juice.

Being useless is a choice and while it is a common human logic to have an inflated feeling of self-importance, my sister has long voluntarily taken the path of a bum. It may be fated for the hearing-impaired, at least here, to join the pack of the unemployed after college but they definitely have the option to try. Somehow, I think it is the only way to make the authorities aware of the need to legislate bills that will give them priority over the able. I’m not giving that assurance anytime soon, especially with the retrieval of election funds that’s gonna materialize right after the Presidential Elections. I don’t mind starting on this topic but that’s not the point I’m swerving at. Long introduction short: the pebbles in our lawn are evidently much useful than my sister.

As I put my pouts into words now, she is probably in her bed dozing like Snorlax whose potbelly is more plump than ever. In her dreams, I assume, is her fairly new 50-year old boyfriend affectionately snuggling her– yes, another old bloke from US. Roughly five hours from now, she will rise to tame her stomach that now emits sounds which resemble a frog croaking in screamo. The highlight of her day comes when she turns on the computer to launch Camfrog and have a lovely conversation with William (the boyfriend) from 7 am til 4 pm. Dinner, sleep, breakfast, PC and the routine is fixed on loop again. Everyone’s idealistic notion of exciting, is it not?

Before you pull a grimace at my irate mockeries, if it’s any comfort to your moral sense, our family has tried proposing businesses she can handle alone despite her disability. She was actually pretty cool with everything until we mentioned that the PC she’ll be using at work is exclusively for the purpose of getting her tasks done (read as no 10 hrs/day video call with William). To her, the idea of supporting herself with her self-earned money is petty to the thought of not seeing the man she talks to every single day of her potentially-opportune life. I no longer try to figure out whether she thinks of her future because she obviously does. Her future as a deaf married to a man based in US has been in her mind and all along, her life has been purely dedicated to achieve that end. What a waste of a solid educational background.

Before she turns 23 this June, I wish her daily iterations would encounter a “break;” somewhere. May she finally outgrow her glam American Dream as well.

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PS: Now that I shuffle through my entries, they are mostly about her. I promise to stop this series soon.