Holidays are negotiable.

It just hit me that Simbang Gabi (Dawn Mass) starts today. Even if I don’t go to church and my spirituality is highly negotiable, I’m still a Christmas person. Even if it gets less exciting every single year, shutting work down for a week is priceless. From 24th December to 1st January, sloth and gluttony are legitimate. Hyper-materialism is considered ‘reward’ for a tiring year, and notoriously broken plans like “We should have dinner!” more or less materialise at this time.

Unfortunately, this Christmas, sloth is out of the picture. I have essays due next month, a dissertation to work on, and PhD proposals to put together. Gluttony is not too special, because it will not serve a celebratory function, but a lame diversion from stress. Also, it’s hard to be materialistic when you’re broke. Window shopping is torture. And obviously, (we should have) dinner plans will be shelved for sometime. It’s not really my thing to derive happiness from my close friends’ misery, but I take solace in the fact that other people are tied up with non-Christmassy obligations too.

I don’t want to concede that inability to take a break is part of adulthood. Because academic and professional schedules are not patterned after the Gregorian calendar, we just have to adjust the ‘holidays’ we can celebrate. For students, that would be summer, for accountants that would be … I don’t know, sometime after closing the books and for people in sales, that would be never. I hate to pull the ‘social construction’ card, but it makes sense, holidays are social constructions. We don’t have to be too disappointed just because we can’t celebrate with the rest of the non-worked up world.

So to my friends going to Dublin, Germany, Prague and Italy this Christmas: Enjoy, you unsympathetic slackers … and buy me something pretty ;p

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.

Sunshine and chocolate

Now that I consider coffee, alcohol and Twix as major food groups, some of my friends are a bit worried about my lifestyle. In my defence, my vices and addictions serve specific “productive” functions. I don’t smoke because smoking makes me inefficient, but I drink coffee and pop caffeine pills to kick sluggishness off my system. If not, I’ll hibernate. Gloomy weather is conducive for sleeping, to the point that my miserable bed looks so inviting for hibernation.

Consequently, this raises the need (and I’m not just making this up ;p) for alcohol to keep me warm. When all sorts of thermals fail, I’ve got to find a more dependable source of heat. Of course, alcohol has fringe benefits too – anyone can raise the juvenile excuse of “Oh, it wasn’t me. It was Peroni talking that night.” Appalling, but when you neither have the time nor the interest to dissect every failed social interaction, convenient excuses are lifesavers.

Twix is part of the list because it’s a source of sugar. Sugar releases endorphins, and to shamefully quote one of Hollywood’s most popular ditz, “Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands” or themselves, or pesters. In a way, chocolate can save the world.

So in the grand scheme of things, there is nothing to worry about. My liver can still take alcohol, caffeine can’t do much damage with my already undernourished bones, and there’s definitely room for Twix because I am under medication which hastens my metabolism.

Rationalising, next to whining, is fun.

In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria. [sic]

Midge is boss.

Congratulations to my close friend Midge, who is now in-charge of “hiring, quality control and all things associated with research” in MMG Manila. May endless corporate exploitation buy you Vera Wang shoes and bigger Chloé sunglasses.

Philanthropy is now a trend among the affluent. You have a starving friend in Manchester, who also doesn’t mind receiving Vera Wang shoes and bigger Chloé sunglasses.

The Latin American Obsession

I’d probably spend the next few years reading, writing and researching on Latin America. I’m currently working on my dissertation about Venezuela, particularly about the prospects of the military as source of state ideology. Much Marxist and post-Marxist literature consider the military as a coercive apparatus that only implements state ideology and my dissertation looks at the reverse – how the military itself can be the source of state ideology. When I tell people about my topic, a lot of them say it’s interesting – either out of courtesy or sincerity, I’ll never know. I remember my Bolivian friend telling me “military is such a big word for a small girl.” But the common question I normally encounter is – why Latin America? What drives a frail Asian girl who speaks neither Spanish nor Portuguese to study Latin America?

I’m not going to fabricate some “when-I-was-a-little-girl-I-was-fascinated-with-Aztecs” type of story. I did not watch Marimar. I picked Dhalsim over Blanca in Street Fighter, and I was never Montezuma in Sid Meier’s Civilization. (I was Bismarck when I conquered the world.) Honestly, it was Gareth Richards who stirred my interest in Latin America in his undergraduate course Politics of Change. People can say whatever they want about Gareth, but I’m not ashamed to admit that he greatly influenced my research interests and even my choice of university for post-grad. Then of course, there’s Walden Bello. He was supportive enough to let me deliver his MA lecture on Democratic Transitions in Chile and it just amazed me how structurally similar yet qualitatively different Chile and the Philippines are.

But what really fascinates me about Latin America is the rise of populist leaders and their anti-neoliberal rhetoric. In Venezuela, constitutions are sold in the streets and people actually buy and read it. In Brazil, kids in the mountains blame unrestricted free trade for their poverty. If that’s not enough, Hugo Chavez calling Bush the devil in the UN and the donkey in his television programme is entertaining to say the least. That’s not something you see everyday.

Of course, there are perky factors that triggered my interest too, like Venezuela’s good track record in Miss Universe and other beauty pageants, or the observed overproduction of ‘el guapos’ in Dominican Republic (Didith and Ollie can attest to this!).

So while everyone else is obsessed about China or the Middle East, I think I’m set in focusing on Latin America. After all, with this topic, I don’t mind going on fieldwork.