Still alive… and unemployed. And the dog fell from the roof.

These past two months, I’ve lost the motivation for blogging. I don’t know why.

I’ve applied to most of the major hospitals in Metro Manila, and I’ve been attending my classes thrice a week. Despite that I’m not really busy. I do want to be, but lately it seems that I have to force myself to GET. A. MOVE ON IT.

I just feel like putting off everything. I am not exaggerating when I say that I feel like sleeping forever! Okay, maybe I am. I just want to keep lying in bed, not doing anything. Preferably for a very long period of time. Ugh.

***

Moving onto lighter things, my friend Gelo and I decided to spend some time educating ourselves on the Japanese language with the dictionaries and phrase books in National Bookstore (oh yes, we lead quite an exciting life, hanging out in National Bookstore. Please give us a job now).

One of these books had a title similar to Teach Yourself to Speak Japanese and in my opinion, contained absolutely the funniest phrases ever, considering that it’s not a humor book like Wicked Japanese for the Traveler (which I own a copy of, by the way). I doubt that there would be many situations in which I’d feel compelled to say “whose chickens are those” or “this pencil is very long,” and best of all, “the dog fell from the roof (inu wa yane kara ochimashita).”

Really. The dog fell from the roof. That makes me wonder whether some of the Japanese keep their dogs on the roof, like we do. It’s very common here in the Philippines. Seriously. I’d be in a car on a flyover and I’d look down and see a dog with a leash on a shanty house roof. Sometimes there is a small doghouse too.

Trips to bookstores will always be informative. In one short afternoon we learned that majority of the English dictionaries in National Bookstore didn’t include the word “discombobulate” (actually, none of the dictionaries there did), and that National Bookstore had its own little commercial ditty, and a very dramatic one too. Listen to it on National Bookstore radio in the branch nearest you. Yep, we are Laking National.

Slippers are very unprofessional (it’s a dog day)

I went to Megamall today to see a dog show.  It was more of an exhibition of working dogs- bomb sniffing and personal protection, mostly of the breed Belgian Malinois.  Yes, I really have nothing to do.  My dad trains and breeds dogs like those, so yeah, he’s an enthusiast, as most of us are in the family.  This is how they look like:

bax with my dad's feet

That is our monster of a dog, Bax.  We didn’t have him with us, this is just an old picture.  I didn’t take any today since I was too far, and too disappointed.

It didn’t seem like anyone prepared for the show (the dogs, the trainers, the event organizers, I could go on and on).   My dad’s friends, who were invited as the judges, took over the emceeing since there was no host (c’mon, a show with no host?  Argh).  I am also very sorry to say that the quality of training of those dog was so bad that the audience found it entertaining and I started shoegazing.  6 to 7:30PM.  That is how I found out that one of the dog handlers was wearing slippers in the ring while showing his dog.  That was funny.  Why, oh why did he have to wear slippers?  I wish I was close enough to get a shot!

I was so bored that I was able to finish drawing one of the dogs on my DS:

one of the dogs at the show

I am quite worried about those dogs.  If dogs with that kind of training are being used for bomb-sniffing in malls, hotels, and other public places (and they probably are), I won’t be surprised if the bombs went off and there would be chunks of debris and maybe, but hopefully not, human parts flying in the air (I can recall an event like that that happened one or two years ago, cause unknown, or being witheld from the public by the government and the mall owner, or something).

I’m just saying, Belgian Malinois are a great breed as working dogs, one of the best even- with the right training, that is.