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I typically spend most of my nights writing in Eastwood Mall, a good five minute walk from where I live; sacrificing sleep for a few hours of self-delusion over what comprises ‘talent’. I write mostly at Gloria Jean’s Coffee, which one of my good friends also happen to own (small plug: 2nd floor veranda, Eastwood Mall, Eastwood City, Libis, Quezon City. Free chocolate Krispies with cold drinks) and stay until closing hours. I spend most of my free time there because I never could seem to find enough concentration to maintain the solid 500-1000 words an hour pace I enforce on myself at home, but also because there are far too many odd / interesting people stumbling into the coffee shop that a parody of them sometimes find their way into the novel I’ve been working on for the last month. Three of the more specific examples:

1. I am not a big fan of South Koreans currently living in the Philippines. They walk around with an annoying air of smug condescension; they are poor enough to deem Seoul an expensive place to live in, but rich enough to acknowledge that they have more money than 90% of the Philippine population, the latter also being the 90% they frequently cheat / steal from / mock. They trash condos and contribute to the growing street pollution; they ignore scuba instructors’ warnings about nitrogen narcosis, jump into oceans, die, and then leave behind equally idiotic relatives / friends who somehow decide the aforementioned scuba instructors are to be blamed anyway; they eat at Korean-owned restaurants, sleep at Korean-owned resorts, sing at Korean-owned karaoke bars and therefore contribute no significant revenues to the economy of the country they are using government tax loopholes to exploit.

More importantly, Filipinos seem willing enough to endure these abuses, because they’re hospitable folk with an incurable love for Korean telenovelas. Most importantly, I am somehow blamed for all this simply because many think I’m Korean, given how I look.

I am the last person to be called a racist, so I shall be politically correct and say that not all South Koreans living in the Philippines are total jerkwads. It just so happens that every South Korean that I have met are jerkwads.

Two Korean males have been frequenting the coffee shop whenever I’m there, ordering the cheapest lattes they can in order to spend the next four hours charging their laptops for free and hogging the coffee shop’s internet. There is some evidence that one of them actually used the shop’s bathroom for a makeshift shower, possibly because they’ve been kicked out of the condos they’ve just trashed and are pissed because they couldn’t get back the deposits they were planning to blow on Starcraft.

I was working on a chapter revolving around an arrogant queen bee princess and her inner circle of mostly debutantes, (believe me, it sounds a lot better in the readthrough than any attempt I can make at this point to explain further) and after an hour or so watching the two conversing in incomprehensible language and mentally tacking on my own subtitles (“Look at my superpowered nose hairs, Yun Pak Mi! Each time I inhale, I can see the future!” “Use it only for good, Menta Lee Ill, lest my overpowering flatulence prove to be your Kryptonite!” “Do not want!”), I added two Asian twin princesses to the posse. They’re possibly the two antagonists I’ve enjoyed writing about the most so far, mostly because their self-professed intelligence is light years ahead of everyone else’s that people are only able to comprehend their cleverness as general stupidity.

2. A guy comes into Gloria Jean’s (2nd floor veranda, Eastwood Mall, Eastwood City, Libis, Quezon City. Free chocolate rice Krispies with cold drinks!), and is greeted by a gaggle of giggling girls already occupying one of the coffee shop tables. The guy turns out to be one of the contestants for a quasi-reality show in the Philippines called Starstruck, which is like a strange mix of American Idol and a generic soap opera, except with even poorer taste and viewers who aren’t able to tell the difference. He was apparently only recently eliminated from the show, and was regaling his female admirers with tales of being mobbed by fans begging for autographs or to have their pictures taken with him at the Red Mango yogurt shop just down the block, how his mother threw a surprise party for him when he returned to his condo after being eliminated, and how he was now due to host a show called Boys, Boys, Boys. He was very much the pretty-boy type that a lot of Filipino women seem to go for: tall and pale, showing off his foreign roots by talking Filipino with an obvious Western accent, and had the Spanish mestizo features reminiscent of a Marimar Spanish drama though, as far as I could tell, chest hairs were not as prominently displayed.

As I sit here and listen to him talk, and watching the girls gush, it occurred to me that while the words might sound arrogant to an outsider, he wasn’t being arrogant at all. He took his successes at their face value, seemed to accept that women were going to swoon at his feet for the rest of the duration he would remain on primetime, but without the necessary smugness that often accompanied that realization. Here was someone who could be that stereotypically rich dashing pretty-boy who knew he was gorgeous, and knew it without throwing that fact in anyone’s faces. Someone who everyone would have loved to hate if he wasn’t so freaking nice.

Ten minutes later, and I’d finished fleshing out a character I call Nathaniel of Locksley – a dashing, charming prince who could trace his line back to the legendary Robin of Locksley, better known as Robin Hood. Like his predecessor, well-loved by most, but mainly created to serve as a perfect foil to one of his peers – an unpopular, not-as-well-loved boy descended from an equally unpopular sheriff and sworn enemy of Robin Hood, though possibly because of his more obvious flaws, a shade more interesting when placed in comparison.

I never did know who that guy was, and decided I didn’t need to waste time googling who he was. Somehow, I thought I would find him more interesting if I only knew of what he seemed to be, and nothing of who he really was.

3. Every week, a Bible Study group takes up residence at Gloria Jean’s (2nd floor veranda, Eastwood Mall, Eastwood City, Libis, Quezon City, and did I mention the free chocolate Krispies with most cold drinks?). Stephen Colbert frequently defines agnostics as atheists with no balls, and at last check, I seem to fit that description perfectly. I have no qualms with Bible study groups in general, and I believe in everyone’s right to create their own cults to address any psychological hang-ups and need to belong. But when they start talking in all-knowing voices, and comparing tenets in Bible passages to the disgust they feel at the ignorant unbelievers they are forced to meet in the daily cesspool that they understand as life, then yes, I do have a problem.

Something you Bible thumpers might need to know, if you’d already brainwashed yourselves into believing otherwise: YOU CANNOT ACKNOWLEDGE PASSAGES OF THE BIBLE AS THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND THEN REJECT OTHER PASSAGES WHILE YOU’RE AT IT. IF THE BIBLE PROHIBITS HOMOSEXUALITY, THEN STONING PEOPLE FOR WORKING ON THE SABBATH, HAVING MULTIPLE WIVES, AND CONDONING SLAVERY SHOULD BE UPHELD AS TRUTHS ALONG WITH IT AS WELL. YOU CAN’T REMOVE SOME PASSAGES IN THE BIBLE JUST BECAUSE THE CULTURE YOU KNOW TODAY CLASHES WITH THEIRS, AND PRAISE OTHERS SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY CONFORM TO YOUR PARTICULAR VIEWPOINT. ALSO, STOP GETTING PISSED OFF EVERY TIME I SAY WORDS LIKE WHORE OR ASS, BECAUSE THOSE ARE ALSO FOUND IN THE BIBLE. IF THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD THEN I GUESS GOD MUST SAY ‘WHORE’ A LOT, TOO.

Inspired by the weekly dose of hypocrites, I found myself with a group of fictional characters that – till I think of a better name or grow lazy while doing so, whichever comes first – term the Elders; a council that oversees much of the administrative duties of the kingdoms they represent, but have been too puffed up by their own importance patting themselves on the back from the belief that it is their right to rule, that they are unaware of their own kingdoms crumbling down around them, wracked by the periodic forays of unchecked ogres and imps and giants into their territories, until it is too late.

Gee. Wonder what sort of people inspired that?

Some recurring visitors to this site (all three of you) may think that the vague (for good reason; this is the internet, after all) descriptions of this forthcoming (hopefully) novel bear little resemblance to the Monstertown series I planned to make only scant months ago. You’re right; it’s a different attempt at a different novel of a different genre, because my self-deprecating attitude towards writing a novel is so great, I need to write two novels at once to encompass it in its entirety. Go me.

In conclusion? I love people.

As long as I don’t get to interact with them in any way.