Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Hunting from the couch

from the comfortable confines of my black-cushioned, white spray-painted ikea couch, i've begun to take a sniff at the job market for creatives here in lah-lah land. sniffing is as far as i can go at this point -- without my marriage license and thereby my dependent pass, i'm ineligible for any sort of legit job application.

the first ten minutes of my online puttering was quite a roller coaster. i started seeing words like "leverage" and "solutions" and was forcibly reminded of my days at the factory. besieged by the wealth of editorial jobs up for grabs on jobsdb, i went into a mini-panic and considered, for about two full minutes, a return to publishing.

this was totally a return to the old job-hunting me: unsure of what i wanted, but prone to worrying about getting a job and thus even more prone to accepting any job that would take me. when i realized it, the voice in my head did me a huge favor (for once) and said, in no uncertain terms, "NO."

digging deeper into the job forums, i started looking up all the graphic design openings even if i'm not a graphic designer. and what i found really, really excited me: a fistful of witty, irrevent, creative and independent design firms. i found websites that literally got my heart beating and the wheels in my head turning. i would totally customize portfolios for, and whore myself out to, some of the firms i came across this afternoon.

i was just telling marlon the other day that my heart belongs to/my career direction is television (i really don't watch television the way i did two years ago!), but working as a copywriter for a small design firm (even freelance) totally opened up as a possibility for me today!

don't you love how possibilities just give your butt a special tickle? heck, it's enough of a tickle to get me off this couch!

now, if you'll excuse me, i have three boxes of beloved books to unpack and big, downy-scented fluffy yellow towels to hang up and dry.

p.s. i've decided to blog about the wedding when i get the raw wedding photos from our photographer. which should be anytime in the next two or three days.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Creating the couchwife

immediately prior to and after the wedding, i would inevitably get asked whether or not i was going to be a housewife in singapore. and i would inevitably bristle. while on a conceptual level i knew that there's nothing wrong with being a housewife, and that a housewife, in effect is what i'm going to be until i get a steady job here in lah-lah land, the pouty, stubborn and prickly part of me still put its foot down on the term.

that is, until i moved into the conjugal digs on cactus drive, plunked down in front of the samsung lcd tv (marlon's most prized and joyous home purchase), and discovered the wonders of digital hd tv.

lulled into surrender by the comforting weight of my husband's arm, a comforting meal of spam, rice and pokka iced tea, and a deliciously long tv playlist (miami ink, a model life with petra nemcova, kinky boots, gladiator and many more), i gleefully acquiesced to the existence of a sedentary spouse, albeit temporarily and with my own little twist.

"magiging couchwife na lang ako!"

today is day one of the couchwife life, and it ain't so bad. the morning was spent fulfilling the "-wife" half of the equation: i woke up bright and early to cook breakfast for marlon on his first day back on the job.

my sunny side-up eggs over easy (marlon taught me to do the "over easy" part the night before) were quite... aethestically challenged. luckily, marlon loves eggs far too much to be picky. "any egg is a good egg!" he declared, chomping down his morning cholesterol. still, i'm determined to pull off perfectly plump, round yolks in future breakfasts. i know, i know, i'm adding way too much significance to eggs.

after going back to sleep for a good four hours, i rolled out of bed at lunchtime to do more wife stuff. i took dry clothes off the wire drying rack we've temporarily set up on the balcony (a.k.a. future painting and coffee nook). i stuffed another installment of the neverending honeymoon laundry into our tiny washing machine. i swept our bare marble floors and cleared the living room by stuffing the last of the honeymoon clutter into my pink suitcase for future sorting.

and now, to balance things out, is couch time. surfing the net, reading, and making up for lost tv time (i must have been the only tv network employee who never watched tv) with my beloved discovery travel and living channel. all this while waiting for 4.5 cubic meters of stuff to arrive from manila -- my clothes, books, abubots plus our daybed and wedding gifts are supposed to be delivered before 6pm.

i have wedding kwento to spill, honeymoon photos to sort and upload, and a new life to map out and create. but for now, being a couchwife is my easy access to settling in just fine.