there and back again: the non-hobbit's tale

i'm back from two weeks in the philippines. so much had happened that made me laugh and cry that i really can't even cough up the cliff note's here.

when i finally got on the plane to leave the philippines, i had an instantaneous urge to cry over how hard it is to get there and how sad it is to leave not knowing when you can come back. but, it got killed once i put on my headphones to pipe in the in-flight entertainment. rod stewart's "da ya think i'm sexy" was playing, and i realized how it was all too fitting to have that as my soundtrack during a brief moment of honest emotion. instead of crying, i ended up laughing while looking dumbly into a book about surveillance culture in america pretending it was the source of my giggling. really, it was the fact that i was being prevented from expressing my true feelings of sadness because rod stewart had once decided to take a brief turn at disco.

when i landed in LAX, a japanese-style muzak-ked version of "a whole new world" was playing through the headphones. funny, the plane was just touching down on the same smoggy, desert paradise of los angeles that i left two weeks before.

one excerpt:
my uncle regarding the fact that he was seeing me for the first time in two years for another wedding in which i was in: when are you going to come back here as the bride and not the bridesmaid?

me: what are you talking about? i got a promotion. i was maid of honor. i'm moving on up that ladder!

disclaimer: thankfully, i'm not one of those women hung up on not being or getting married. that was never my end-all be-all dream in life. i'm here on earth to just cough up witty banter in dodging the ever-persistent question from my family there about my missing engagement. that, and i like being a free radical that enjoys the instability of being a rogue electron. word...