A whirlwind trip downtown with Julien at 6 in the evening, both of us shivering in the cold, holding hands while stepping over dog poo and spilt ice cream cones, dodging the mad crowd of Saturday shoppers, making faces at babies in carriages and running away before the babies started telling on their parents. This morning I woke up to rain and gray skies; immediately declared that today was officially “Lazy Day” and spent hours in my pajamas, dragging my blanket around with me, dawdling around the apartment.

And then there are the little things that make rainy Saturdays comfortable. Cappucino, for one. Taking a bubblebath. Reading three-month old Practical Web Projects magazines. Talking about penguins (because I really want one-ha!). Listening to the new Nada Surf album, while working on our respective computers.

Lately I feel like I’ve been coding my life. Adjusting tables, inserting images, bugging and debugging. I keep on opening programs. I keep on tweening animations. I go back and forth, back and forth, to and fro, rocking in place. I check my mail with an obsession. I send my sister Yahoo messages and lament the fact that she never answers me back. I send long emails to my friends back home, and seldom get answers. I spend ten euros on stamps to send postcards to people I miss back home, and maybe they don’t miss me back, because I never hear from them.

So I sit and I code my life, because at least, codes do what you want them to do. They react to every command you type. You upload them and they show up when you refresh. I realise, of course, that this is a sad thing.

I’ve finished Julien’s mum’s website which everyone should visit because unlike me, she is good in what she does.

Spent last Friday over at Makis’ place, where we went on a pseudo-hike in the woods of Carry-le-Rouet; being intimidated by a pair of gloves lying on the ground (Errr…could those be… murder gloves? Should we continue?”) and tying a piece of paper to a tree as a marker. That evening, joined by Julien, we had a drink in a bar and at one time, with the Tagalog-English-French conversation we were carrying, it felt like we were back in Manila, drinking overpriced beer instead of San Mig Lites. The illusion didn’t last long – the bill always reminds you you’re in France. Good times.

I was saying I wanted a penguin because I watched La Marche de l’Empereur, a documentary about les manchots, not to be confused with penguins. (In English they call manchots ‘penguins’, which is stupid because penguins live in the North Pole and can fly, while manchots live in the South Pole and can’t fly – which I suppose is because they have really fat, cute, fluffy butts. But that’s just my theory. I like to incorporate butts into all my theories.)

Empereur penguins, which are a type of manchot, make a trip once a year through the deserts of Antartica to breed. They pair off and mate, and once the females have laid a single egg they leave it to their husbands, who cradle the egg on the tops of their feet to keep them warm. The female empereurs leave for two months in order to look for food. During these 2 months the male empereur penguins eat nothing as they await their partner to return, so they can have their turn to hunt for food themselves.

And then, during this waiting time, the eggs hatch.

The daddies have to keep the little ones between their legs to keep them warm enough, but soon enough they grow too big to fit and start waddling off on their own. Finally the mummies come home, and the daddies, weak with exhaustion, go off to look for nourishment.

I can’t believe something as poetic and as beautiful as this happens every year in the Antartica!

During the film, when they showed the determination of the male empereurs ducking against the cold Antartic snowstorm, cradling their eggs between their legs, probably overcome with exhaustion and starvation, I remarked to Julien that all men could learn a thing or two from the Empereur penguins, to which he replied that 1. Men aren’t crazy enough have sex in Antartica, and 2. Empereur penguins are too overrated anyway. Ah, the bitterness!