Do you know what a time capsule is? It's a metal container filled with paraphernalia linked to the present times buried for future generations to wow at.
Time capsules are buried by many people so that they can be remembered, perhaps as a preservation of legacies. Those Childcraft books recommend it. Maxim Magazine recommends it.
You can call them whatever you want to. I call them legal boxes of buried trash. But I'd still like a peek of what's inside when I find one while I landscape the herb garden in the back of my future home.
Recently I learned that they can be made, buried, and discovered... all by accident.
This 'article' was something Andreia needed me to do for her to use as an intro to her 'nightlife' case study. It was never sent to her because it was never finished. It was saved as a draft in my Hotmail account. I made it, I buried it somewhere I'd forget about it, and now I discovered it again.
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The word 'nightlife' is up there with the words 'love', 'life', 'sex', and 'death' - everyone you ask has their own unique point of view for them.
The folks over at Webster define 'nightlife' as 'the activity of or entertainment provided for pleasure-seekers at night (as in nightclubs )', or 'establishments providing nightlife'. A few decades ago a singer named Alicia Bridges took the word 'nightlife' and associated it with the words 'boogie' and 'disco'. To the introverted or otherwise financially incapable, nightlife could mean a bottle of gin, a guitar, and a few fried canned meat products in a huge bowl with a few friends. To the extravagant and eccentric, it could be a masquerade leading to an erotic tete-a-tete or a wet t-shirt party at some disco or some poor guy's soon-to-be-wrecked swimming pool.
Where a person is at can also widen his or her perceptions about the word. Every place, every city is unique from the other when it comes to nightlife.
....Baguio City is one of those cities. This place has been a big factor to how i define nightlife. I i lived in this city, learned from city, and i partied like hell in this city.
My early days of discovering what nightlife is were spent with a random circle of friends and the radio, round a random bottle of liquor (Ice-cold beer was a favorite, yet we were too young and drunk to appreciate it as much as we could have during the time). It was all about drinking and talking and laughing at each other. As our stomachs grew more resistant to alcohol, our need to get out more grew as well. I started going out to meet my friends over at bars, playing hooky with my parents. There was a time that we would just smoke during lunchtime to save our money, meaning more beer for later. When we didn't have money, we'd wait for a friend to break out his/her wallet. And when virtually everybody was broke it was back to the house and the radio. We used to drink whenever we felt like it, and the least it took was a hint that one of our friends wanted to. If there was a hill or an abandoned house that looked suitable, we would drive over and drink, smoke, laugh and everything else in it.
The pleasure you get from nightlife in this place depends on how you handle it - 'diskarte', if you will.
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I just thought I'd post it because I was just astounded. Wow. That was definitely a different Brent back then. Back then I was thinking of myself as one of those with extra challenges in the nightlife game. Now, after a really deep sigh and a slight head shake, I wish I was back in those days of allowance-fueled reveries.
(By the way, do take note that it's a bit shallow because I was writing it down to impress. yech.)
Change just had to happen between then and now.
I remember bragging and endorsing Nevada Square to Andreia way back, saying it was the Eastwood of Baguio City. Last Saturday night I was there, and it was just... different. I can just say that the filth that ruined Legarda moved to Nevada.
I know what you're thinking. Move back to Legarda? The place is dead now, still suffering from post hiphop wannabe infection.
Here I am.. just bitching about what's happening now. I'm at work, and when I'm not, there's nowhere to go like before when I was in school. I'm growing older, I have my lady, and I'm actually paying for every beer that I drink now...
I'm actually a bit thankful that I opened that time capsule right there. I just didn't find out what things were like in the past; I also came up with the conclusion that Change, like Circumstance, can be such a motherfucker and a sweet friend at the same time. It's something that you can hate but still something that you will definitely look for every now and then.
So... How do you handle change to always tip the scales to your favor no matter how shitty things seem?
(To be continued)