I celebrated my birthday this year by moving to a small studio on the third floor of a small tenement complex that overlooks a narrow street on the “poor” side of what passes for downtown in postmodern Manila.

It’s not a pretty building and calling it depressed wouldn’t be far from the truth. It was built in the late 70’s as an edifice to the mistress of some Marcos lackey. You know it’s from that era because it comes replete with the design clichés of that day: glass jalousies for all the windows, narrow staircases and even narrower passageways, and really, really bad lighting.

Rarely, just rarely, you can see how beautiful the building must have looked, once. To do that, one has to look beyond the cracking paint, missing lights, and broken jalousies, but I doubt if that has still happens to anyone actually living here. Most of the people here just don’t seem to care.

This is actually a good thing. Because the building looks so awful, rent on my unit is likewise awfully cheap. It’s so on the cheap that I actually have serious doubts when it comes to the moral character of my neighbors.

Since the neighbors don’t give a damn, I don’t have to pay extra for building repairs. If anything public breaks down, it’s usually because it’s your part of the hall that gets darkened that some anonymous neighbor to replace a hall light. From the way things look around here, that doesn’t happen pretty often.

It doesn’t help any that my apartment is on the far end of the third floor of a three-story building. This means that I’m going to be the last one out in case anything happens. This also means that if any lights go out, I’m the inconvenienced one. No one lives in the flat opposite, so I’m alone in my misery.

I think it all adds to that el cheapo charm that my building exudes.

When you walk into my apartment, the first thing that strikes you is that it looks quite empty. From the front door, nothing obstructs your view or your movement except for a small refrigerator and a single-burner stove, both items being gifts in act of mercy from my parents. I’ve placed them in the developer-designated kitchen area.

Designated kitchen areas are hard to miss. There’s a small tiled sink on one end that acts as a kitchen sink and doubles as your bathroom sink and your laundry sink. This makes for a pretty interesting soap rack. Right beside the detergent you may find a wok, a dinner plate, utensils, my old toothbrush, toothpaste, and my shaving kit.

It’s a small apartment, this one. The whole thing is three big steps wide and five big steps long, including the bath. The bath is luxurious for these Spartan accommodations; lined with tiles and a toilet that actually flushes. On the opposite side of the toilet is a small showerhead. That’s it. If you want to wash up, you use the sink outside. In reality, this bath is more like a tiled closet, but it does its job.

Most of the evidence that someone actually lives here can be found within one foot of the floor and no higher. For a bed I have my old sleeping bag, which should suffice for the next few months until I get that raise. There are no built-in cabinets to store any clothes; I live out of my knapsack and my suitcase. On second thought, I think I’ll get them cabinets first.

I haven’t gone around to buying a fan to cool me during the day, mostly because I’m not here when the sun’s up. The real value in having a fan is in keeping them mosquitoes at bay. It’s more effective than incense or that electronic bug zapper I helped my friend buy the other week.

The temperature being as it is where I live; having a computer just isn’t possible. Instead, I’ve come to write my entries longhand, not because I think it will improve my penmanship, but there’s simply no place for a computer here. If the heat doesn’t get to it, the neighbors will.

I like writing in longhand anyway.

An apartment on the third floor isn’t that far enough to isolate you from the noise of the street below during the day, but in the deep of night even the streets are asleep. In the day, the street below gradually fills with the din of pedestrian, equine, tricycle, motorcycle, and automobile traffic that make it all but impossible to write. At night, the silence can drive you batty, likewise disabling your capacity to write coherent thought. Somewhere in between is the perfect balance where words may be written. If someone ever finds that balance, I hope he or she or it gets in contact with me. It’s always that there’s more of this, too little of that, but it never gets to just right.

There are 381 individual cracks on the ceiling. Did you know that? 381. I counted them all last night.

Oh yeah, mail came in this morning, from the phone company. There aren’t any available lines in my area, and I’d have to wait three more weeks to see if anyone couldn’t pay their bills. That was something that happened quite often in this neighborhood, if the neighbors’ tales are to be believed.

Time to leave for work. I’ve installed two dual-sided deadbolts, and I pray every morning that they work until I get back home. Before living here I couldn’t care less about God. Now, he’s my home security system.

What am I complaining about? It was my idea to move out of my folks’ digs, if I remember right. It was more like I was forced into it. Dad couldn’t find virtue in any of my actions (as opposed to finding fault) and Mom wasn’t any help either. In the end, I guess I really didn’t have any choice.

Someone once said, “Tell me where you live and I’ll tell you who you are.” What does that say about me?