I settled into a corner bunk, which I do not own, and hoped that no one would attempt to claim it for I hate to spend a night beside a stranger without so much as a respectable barrier nor do I desire to be on the top bunk where it is most cumbersome getting down and getting up again (the cashier gave me a top bunk despite my pleading to give me the bottom). As I readied myself for the six-hour voyage to Cebu, a couple descended out of nowhere, took the opposite bunk, and abruptly started, as if I wasn't there, to flirt shamelessly in front of me. I bought and attempted to read a newspaper, all the time feeling uncomfortable and increasingly uneasy at their frivolous giggling and lusty whisperings. Unable to withstand it any longer, irritated and angry, I stood and walked out of the room, took a stroll outside to gaze at the harbor lights and the agitated ocean half-swallowed by darkness.

---

The winds have increased their strength, as the ship headed to Cebu in the darkness of the night (the overly affectionate couple had gone somewhere, I hope, still aboard), and the waves shook the ship to such an extent that I felt sick to my stomach. It would have been an expected thing, with the tail of a typhoon still whipping the country, and perhaps bearable to a certain degree that I could have fallen asleep oblivious to it all- except for the infernal snoring of that abhorred man fast asleep not five feet away from me. He made the most horrible of noises possible for a human being, from grunts to growls to farts to something even I cannot describe, and robbed half of the tourist class passengers, especially me, of their precious sleep. An entire herd of hippopotamus during mating season could have made a more gentle chorus than that confounded pig's nocturnal carols, the brute.

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Morning came. I was able to sleep, somehow, by some miracle. I had intended murdering the man in his sleep, or endeavoured to throw him overboard when I awake, alas! he was not in his bed, the animal. After fixing myself, I went outside, bracing myself against the howling winds, and stared across the bleak horizon. Presently emerged Cebu- a spit of mottled land studded with sticks and covered by a blanket of smog, waving in the high winds. I took in a deep breath of the moist sea air, felt the sting in my bosom, and my hand started shaking once again. I watched the waves threw themselves against the side of the ship, tried to calm my troubled heart and empty my chaotic mind, and strived to find something to smile about- but rather looked like a forlorn and lost stranger all the same.

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Writing from Cebu, inside a cafe, wasting time and loitering in indecisiveness...