Filed under: Philosophy of the Person
“Talking about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Full Name: Anna Gumamela Jose Jacinto-Jackman (Whapack!)
Nickname: Aj but I prefer to be called Anna Gumamela
Best thing about my family: No one cares what you do, but when you’re damned, everybody comes to the rescue.
Worst thing about my family: Nobody seems to be running out of opinions.
Best thing about Marilao, Bulacan: Home.
Worst thing about Marilao, Bulacan: Rainy season clogs drainages, making transportation difficult.
Best thing about DLSU-Manila: You can leave your valuables unattended anywhere within, I repeat, within, the campus and you are guaranteed they will not get lost. (This is way back in 1997-2001; I don’t know if the culture has already changed now that it’s already 2008.)
Worst thing about DLSU-Manila: Its population in the College of Liberal Arts. If you go to Miguel building, you will be swarmed by elitists and coñotics whose major dialect is Taglish and whose sentences are densely populated by the words ‘it’s like parang.’ It will make you scream like hell and run towards a concrete wall, slam your head hard just to drown their ‘it’s like parangs’ echoing in your mind. (Again, this is way back in 1997-2001.)
Nature of Work: Plastic bag and scratch paper collector, sideline of sitting in front a PC manipulating a software showcasing a window tapered with magnificent black gridlines set on a white backdrop. (I love my job, except the plastic bag and scratch paper collecting stuff.)
Best thing about my job: You manage your time.
Worst thing about my job: Monotonous.
Best thing about the company I work for: It’s an asylum of deviants, maniacs, and psychos, with no doctors to sedate anyone. You meet all the freaks in the world, and have fun with them knowing you belong.
Worst thing about the company I work for: Some people. Some maniacs assume I am also one, failing to differentiate me from them. I am merely a psycho-deviant.
Best thing about the Philippines: Climate is very suitable for plants like me.
Worst thing about the Philippines: Bloody elections.
Best thing about the Earth: So many wonderful places to go to, unlike other planets where you would only find rocks and red earth (Mars) or water (Neptune).
Worst thing about the Earth: It seems to be the only living planet in the Solar System. It would be nice to have neighbors, you know. J
Whatevers:
Sports I am into: Badminton, table tennis, swimming, kayaking, Kokak Relay Race, Drain the Pool
Sporting partners: Mister Penguin, Jedi Council
Sports I am not into, but I love anyway: Brawling.
Sports celebrities: My officemates Miss SPB and Miss Pancresa; Martina Hingis.
Favorite color: Yellow.
Favorite hang-out: Our house; Obi-Wan’s Cave; Tia Maria’s U.N. Avenue; Starbucks NLEX, Petron-Marilao
Favorite food: Japanese food (From maki rolls to tiramisu! I love it!); Pasta with white sauce; my mom’s mixed vegetables: carrots, green peas, singkamas, ubod ng buko and quail eggs mixed together, dressed with a thick paste of cooked Nestle cream and other secret spices and ingredients; balut; isaw.
Food I am not going to taste even if given a bribe of $1M: Aso. Yes, as in dog.
Favorite alcoholic beverages: Absolut (any variant); Cerveza Negra; San Mig Light; San Miguel Draft Beer; Chivas Regal; Gran Matador (Suicidal, suicidal…)
Favorite non-alcoholic beverages: Dutch Mill, natural flavor; distilled water; Yakult
Favorite drinking buddies: The Jedi Council; The Jacinto Saturday Club; office mates who get so animated when intoxicated; Mister Penguin
Best habit: Rationalizing
Worst habit: Smoking and swearing
Fiction characters: Remedios the Beauty from G.G. Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude; Phoebe Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; The Chief from Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea; Luca Brasi from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather; Gragnola from Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana; Jacopo Belbo and Casaubon from Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum; Anton Chigurgh of No Country For Old Men; Yellow 4, The Dark Prince, and Kenny of Bioman
Actors/Actresses: Aside from myself, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Robert Downey, Jr., Gerard Butler, Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench
Music Album: Hall and Oates, The Ultimate Collection; The Essential Santana; Andy Williams Moon River Collection
Most-Prized Possessions: My collection of original DVDs, audio CDs, and 1st Edition Books
Thing I wish I did not buy: Way back in high school, a cassette tape of Death Threat (Punyeta!)
Favorite Song: Wildflower (I don’t know who the hell did the original.)
Most hated music: Air Supply, April Boys, Death Threat (Mapapamura ka sa bwisit.)
Performing Artists: Seen live – Steve Lukather, Nyoy Volante, Bamboo, and Jed Madela; seen on DVD – Michael Buble, Luciano Pavarotti
Major Turn–on: Malagkit na tingin ng mga matang kumukuti-kutitap; look at me that way if you have really tantalizing eyes and I guarantee you, you will be my instant crushee
Major Turn–off: Puppy breath and icky teeth; even if you’re able to give me the ‘malagkit na tingin ng mga matang kumukuti-kutitap,’ it wouldn’t work if your breath brings to mind a weaning puppy and your teeth remind me of Orcs. (Something I wish to say to a gorgeous guy who has puppy breath and Orc teeth: Have you been neglecting your diet and oral care for decades?!)
Movies where I saw myself: The Aviator; The Godfather I and II; No Country for Old Men; Clueless
Craziest Film I have ever seen: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (One hell of a flick… it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever; it’s not even plausible—but it keeps you glued to your seat! I like it!!!)
Worst Film I have ever seen: Tasya Fantasya (‘Nyeta. Kung wala dun sila Jerry Codiñera, malamang eh na-comatose na ako.)
Topic of conversation: Anything under the sun except technology, current events, and history; but if you’ll keep me informed with those waterloos of mine, we’ll manage to shoot the lights out with you talking and talking and talking and I’ll listen until my eardrums bleed like freak.
Strength and Weakness: In no respective order: I have a damn good memory and a big blabbermouth.
Easiest thing to do: To do nothing, leaving things in a torrent of change.
Hardest thing to do: To sincerely forgive someone who has betrayed me.
Worst thing someone has ever said behind my back: Said by this obnoxious guy way back in college, “I know Aj’s bra size by heart.”
Worst thing I have ever said to someone behind his/her back: “I pray one day he will be shattered and a woman will help him pick the shards of his broken self.”
Worst thing someone has ever said to me: “You’re scary.” (Then again, in some cases, it is better to be feared than to be loved.)
Worst thing I have ever said to someone: “Ayoko sa iyo. Nakakadiri ka.”
Worst thing I have ever done: Leave a decade-long friend without a word or a trace. But I do not regret it, so how could it be the worst?
Thing I wish I have not done: Touch lives that, as things turned out, are better left untouched.
Best thing I have said to someone behind his/her back: “He/She is a wonderful person.”
Best thing someone has ever said to me: “I want to grow old with you.”
Best thing I have ever said to someone: “I will love you for the rest of my life.”
Noblest thing I have ever done: I did the right thing even if it almost drove me bonkers.
Thing I wish I could have done: Be a good sister to my younger sib when she was still alive.
More Whatevers:
Define love: It’s what the Italians call the thunderbolt—you get hit by it only once in a lifetime. All the clichés that are resurrected when someone talks about love (can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t breathe) are true. Yes, it defies all reasons and logic. It should be mad, passionate, extraordinary; anything less than that is just a form of temporary insanity.
Crushees: Space provided not enough. I have billions of them.
First kissee: Alin, ‘yung may malisya o ‘yung walang malisya? Hahaha!!!
Last kissee: Mister Penguin
First love: When you take into consideration my own definition of love as explicitly written above, it’s Mister Penguin.
Do you believe in long engagement: Yes. It gives you time to prepare yourself, breathe deep before you literally and figuratively take the plunge in a pool called marriage.
Most embarrassing experience, the latest: Laughing my butt off in a public transportation vehicle because of thee letters: MOP.
Greatest achievement: Passing the CPA board exam in November 2001, considering I graduated in September of the same year.
Greatest failure: Not having the balls to take uncalculated risks. (Note the qualifier, uncalculated, as opposed with calculated. I have to be always in control and certain of outcomes before I place my bets. Conclusion: I will never be a good gambler.)
Greatest dream: To be an underworld goddess.
Second greatest dream: To win the PCSO Lottery multi-million peso jackpot.
Third greatest dream: To be a sniper.
Thing I would never want to be: To be a spare tire, in every sense of the word.
Second thing I would never want to be: To be a garbage collector.
Third thing I would never want to be: To be a sanitation aide, even if I’ll work in a posh hotel earning Euros.
Best words of wisdom I have ever heard: From Spandau Ballet’s Lifeline: Live and let live and love; live and let die and love.
Worst words of wisdom I have ever heard: A man and a woman can never be good friends without any romance between them.
Worst advice I have given to someone: “Be like me.”
Best advice I could give to people: Set rules and values for yourself. Create your own laws. Never live your life after someone else’s. Be the master of your fate—and embrace it. (I sound like Nietzsche. What the hell. Great minds think alike!)
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