Never too old for dance

MANILA, Philippines - If not for notifications on Facebook, I could not recall dates or events. My loss of memory is not a sign of old age — it’s just noteworthy that technology is skilled enough to remember these things for you in this day and age when I can barely remember my password for Readmill. Or was it Pinterest?

Celebrating almost 40-something years, my friend with fatherly duties apologized after a post-flurry of warm greetings (some automatic), while end-quoting Twain: “Age is mind over matter. If you do not mind, it doesn’t matter.”

On a lateral thought, age does allow oneself more quirks, as my married confidante would rightly affirm. I outgrew literary classics perhaps after Archie comics. I’ve come to understand that some roads less traveled are meant to be left more peaceful and some roads you have to wage war with in life (as in Fight Club).

A lot of mid-year resolutions are revisited and find fresh resolve in the face of procrastination. With a few years left before I enter middle age, my resolutions are no less specific than keeping a sharper focus and maybe finding more meaning in every day, while continuing to be more useful design-wise. And learning to breathe out and really assess in Stoic scales: is it really worth the effort, coming from the school of design of all scales?

There are some things I will part with. My QWERTY smartphone, par exemplar, is beginning to show some marks of obsolescence. I come from the school of “if it isn’t broke, then don’t fix it,’’ but in this curious case, economics dictate that when something else improved comes along, especially in electronics, then what’s the use of being a nostalgic ninny? The “it’s-a-way-of-life’’ and design merit take a step backward. I was drawn to my Blackberry back in 2009 when I had a hand-me-down Palm, going back to the beginning of my smartphone preferences. Four years of luscious compact design that works, which is more everyday than a fantasy Vertu. My simple demand for more app-connectivity isn’t being served, so it makes sense to recalibrate function over form.

My latter boss always told us that selecting the right hardware is almost like shopping for bargains. It’s finding the best deals and comparing apples to apples. In the end, it’s the best quality at an acceptable offer and rarely the super premium, for once in a rare moon. My former suave style-setting boss also inculcated in me the belief that if a supplier cannot resolve communications well in urgency via e-mail or (was it facsimile?), then it’s a goner. How can you trust them to deliver when they cannot meet your expectations?

It’s okay to flip from a bit of basic visual caffeine when one is dull-ified with actual robusta. Or shifting left-brain/right brain habits to relieve from repetitive one-brain functions. In between waiting for contract work, I’ve delighted in very well-streamlined Tumblr accounts to more assorted agglomerations of newspaper publishing in the format of paper.

There came a time when all this newness turned away us skeptics with a lot of content becoming noise and chatter. But really, even the noise can be refreshing. Of course, sifting through spammy ephemeral headlines and one-on-one shout-out-loud responses requires patience.

I go on to explain to my former co-worker that Beyoncé and Rihanna are equally bouncy than maybe lesser-known pop stars MIA or Hot Chip. The effects of listening to the former are very grounding and less complex, especially in our very straightforward Makati workplace (retro-futurist office blocks mixed with Jolly jeeps). There could be poetry even in unlikely places.