Nowadays, though, I don't have much time for either activity. Most of my hours are spent in this little gray cubicle, under sickly flourescent lighting, staring at lines of computer code on a monitor. I'm a programmer for Ramanujan Information Systems, a financial software company that creates programs for export to the United States. Our office is on the fifth floor of a nondescript office building in San Juan. The books on my desk have such exciting titles as An Introduction to Futures and Options Markets, and Fixed-income Mathematics. And then there's Spread Analysis, which, sadly, has nothing to do with sandwiches or sex. The only reason I'm musing about my childhood pursuits is because I just got e-mail from Raya, an old classmate of mine from my Creative Writing course at the university. 'From' tag: raya@cybermail.com, Subject: Paki-workshop naman o.

"Hey there geekyhead!" the message reads. "Here's your opportunity to stop talking to machines for a while and interact with a real live human being. Enclosed is a sucky story in dire need of some serious workshopping. Your ever-incisive comments and laser-like reading precision would be much welcome. BTW, Dr. Dalusong wants a revised draft of this in two days, so could we please meet & discuss sometime like, say… tonight? Thanks thanks thanks and I'll make it up to you I promise. Coffee's on me."

There's an attachment - a Word file with her latest opus. I open it and save it on a floppy; I'll print it out later, at home. I call up Raya and tell her that I worked nonstop all through last night in a vain attempt to debug an adjustable-rate mortgage routine, and thus my mind is currently in a state much resembling scrambled eggs. She starts to plead in her comically excessive fashion, and then I tell her that all I need is a few hours of sleep and that I'll be glad to meet her sometime after midnight. We settle where and when. next>>