Following the lead of my friend Erik, here are five notes for the weekend.

1. You turn paranoid.  Drew Carey once said that all it takes is three walls for a man to feel trapped.  My paranoia almost always acts up on me, but never more so with my cubicle.  After working on a few write-ups, I look over my shoulder to see if anyone’s watching me doing the old Alt-Tab between my article, the 10 tabs of Firefox I use for researching my articles, and that other Firefox window that’s on YouTube.
2. You dream about your cube.  You really need to go see a psychotherapist if much of your dreams are about you and your cubicle.  Trust me.  There are better things out there to dream about than facing a blank wall.
3. You rearrange your workstation layout more than necessary, and realize that it will always work the same way.  I’ve tried moving my monitor to the left side of my cube, then to the right side of my cube, then to the center of my table.  I tried sitting towards the left of my cube, the right side of my cube, then the middle of my cube… until I realized that I can only do so much with five square feet of space.  So I just settled for placing the monitor to my right.
4. You think you own your cube.  Scott Adams writes that no office worker ever outlasts a cubicle; that on the contrary, your cubicle owns you.  I’ve seen my officemates decorate their cubes with all sorts of self-expressive stuff like toys and Post-It notes.  Maybe I should buy a Mirmo doll.  Besides, the night-shifter who may be using “my” cube reserves the right to leave his Fit N’ Right bottles strewn at the back of “my” monitor.
5. You have lost all sense of night and day.  I enter the office in the morning and leave at night.  ‘Nuff said.

A lot of people are asking me, “What exactly is your job?”  Whenever I say “writer,” my friends back home ask a rather interesting follow-up question:

“What exactly do you write about?”

I’m tongue-tied: but I have signed a confidentiality agreement with my current company that I really can’t divulge anything about what I do.  I can only speak of my job in vague, metaphorical, mysterious-sounding terms that serve to romanticize my cubicle, carpal tunnel syndrome, and dividing my big one-hour break into convenient 15-minute mini-breaks.

I can’t help but think that by some stroke of sheer luck, I have a job that I am actually getting very addicted to.  I’ve never been this addicted to anything since cigarettes, Coke Light (not Coke Zero), and lately, the Ken Lee video at YouTube.  My workmates are very friendly, and I have yet to meet the human equivalent of Catbert.  I don’t have to whine and moan and complain about high noon in Manila because I work in airconditioned comfort.  I actually look forward going to work, save for those freaking MRT rides from Quezon Avenue to Ortigas or Shaw.  Or waking up at 4:30 AM.

The only misgiving I have so far about my job is that I have to commute.  I could, if I wanted to, devote an entire site to how much I loathe and despise the MRT, U-turn slots, and Bayani Fernando’s glamour shots that, again, makes him the perfect spokesman for Kotex (move over, Heart Evangelista).

Other than that, I prefer to keep my job description a mystery.  Unless I get really stressed out one day and have my own “I hate work” story to tell you.

   Tomorrow is the beginning of a whole new chapter of my life: I’m leaving Baguio - my home for all my 22 years - and I’m moving to Metro Manila.  I’ve never been so prepared for a big move.  I’ve just opened my own bank account, bought myself a new pair of red-and-black Chucks, and even went so far as to pay my last cedula (community tax) in Baguio for quite a while.

   But still, I can’t help but feel a bit sentimental.  Sure, signing a tax identification number that makes me an official taxpayer for Pasig City doesn’t mean much, but it struck into me a sort of epiphany: everytime I’ll come back to Baguio, I would be no different from a tourist.  I would probably find myself in the pasalubong sections of the City Market buying peanut brittle and strawberry jam for friends and family in Manila, and the Baguio brooms I have grown so accustomed to would all of a sudden become novel.  Somehow, I hate the thought of leaving, but we all can’t have our cakes and eat them too.

   The Big Move will mark the beginning of my personal and financial independence, but I will miss a hell of a lot of things about being dependent.  With great personal and financial power comes great personal and financial responsibility.  Now that I’m “free,” it doesn’t sound as good as I always thought.  My daily allowance is now at the palm of my hand, and the same goes with rent, food, and other expenses.  I can’t ask for my mom to give me another hundred bucks to tide me over for prepaid load and for snackage.

   I made my own bed when I told my parents I’m off to find my fortune, and to fend off for myself.  Now, I have to sleep in it.  Not just for a six-hour bus trip to Cubao, but for the rest of my life.  The Big Move marks the beginning of my freedom, but it also marks the end of my life as a tax dependent.  It marks the end of my life as a kid, and the beginning of my life as a man.

   Fine: I’m now working for The Man.  At least for now, I have a place in the corporate world of Manila.  Yup, I am now part of the capitalist mainstream: eight-hour days, business casual, permanent wedgies.  For all intents and purposes, I am a sellout.  But hey, it’s decent work: all I have to do is blog.

   The job title is “writer,” but a few friends of mine here in the Metro have a term for it: “corporate blogger.”  I like the sound of “corporate.”  But with that said, I sure as hell am going to miss writing at a leisurely, no-deadline pace in Internet cafés at Baguio City.  No more silver Coke Light cans, in this land of RC Cola and Pepsi.

   Of course, this is not the end of The Marocharim Experiment: it’s just that people who read my blog everyday are going to have to get used with entries on weekends, whenever I can.  You’ll get to read a helluva lot about Manila, about life at work, and the occasional entry charged with sexual allusions, considering the dress sense here.

   There are some projects coming for TMX, but I’m going to keep my mouth shut for now.

   Something tells me that this is not the end of an era: this is the beginning of a whole new adventure.