After spending the past couple of weeks rushing to finish the company newsletter, I finally had a free day. I could spend the daytime mooching about online, or maybe resuming the yoga I'd neglected for several weeks now. In the evening, I was going to watch Beowulf with Shey, so it was a promising day.
The operative tense being was.
The morning was fine, having been spent corresponding with work and making sure my end of the responsibilities was done. And they were. I figured a light breakfast would do (yoga after a heavy meal is a no-no) before I started twisting into pretzel shapes on the living room floor.
But there was one hitch: the neighbors (a talyer shop, really--a big garage-type space with a corrugated-sheet roof, basically a space cavernous enough to amplify any sounds emanating from therein) had started playing some music at a rather high volume. As of 11:00 AM, it was some champorado-type amalgam of techno-remixed songs, interrupted by repeated chunks of the opening "Hey, hey, hey, hey!" from Simple Minds' Don't you Forget about Me, because apparently its some kind of rallying cry that keeps the party goin', b!tch.
By 2:00 PM, the techno remixes stopped, only to be replaced by Air Supply, with one girl singing along to all the songs.
Oh shut up, all of you.
I'd be exaggerating if I said she sang the band's entire discography. Sorry Aldus, they didn't play Making Love out of Nothing at All. But they played damn near everything else.
And when that was done, the siren next door moved on to singing ABBA. Yes Marco, she sang Mama Mia. Yes Art, she sang Dancing Queen. Too bad you weren't here to dance along, because that would've made up for the neighbors' irrepressibly melodic (and emphatic!) singing.
By 6:00 PM, (aba oo, walang humpay ang mga kapit-bahay!) the selection shifted to country music and Englebert Humperdink. I was going to show the guy singing Lonely Is a Man without Love that Lonelier Is the Man without Balls, but I had just taken a shower and needed to moisturize. My vanity takes precedence over his dismemberment.
They're still moaning out there right now, actually. Pinoys may like videoke, but it doesn't necessarily mean a lot of us are good singers. It's like short people playing basketball for the sheer love of it, I guess. But really, I can only tolerate so many forms of sheer love.
Ambot!
