christmas post

last night's noche buena was the weirdest yet. you know what we had back home for christmas eve dinner? beef steak! hahaha. who has beef steak for noche buena?

so i was rocking my nephew to sleep when it suddenly dawned on me that i don't know almost half the lyrics of all the christmas songs i know. i sang wacky jingle bells and i couldn't get pass "laughing all the way..." i sang him "here comes santa claus, here comes santa claus, here comes santa claus way/sleigh/hey???", yeah, you get the point. we never really sit down and talk about the correct christmas song wordings, do we? so i settled for "if you could only see" by TONIC, and well, wacky sort of loved it. when he grows up, he's gonna be a real cool kid.

i think i will talk about the things i got plenty of this holiday season. no, not presents but christmas text messages! gotta love it. when they said the Philippines is the text capital of the world, they weren't kidding at all. leave it to christmas to make people feel the need to splurge on messages they most likely received from other people. i don't like sending text greetings myself simply because my budget seldom allows it. text or no text, however, i would like to believe my friends know i'm thinking of them during the holidays. they better.

anyway, these are the five best text messages i received:

5. Have a blessed Christmas! -- simple, but sincere
4. In this joyous season of merrymaking & endless parties, remember this: "Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator." -- pretty easy advice if you have a cooler for a fridge
3. MEWY KWIzMAZ..Ei,mowez hr..dnt u dare 4get mah gift..hehe..tnx 4 d fwnzhp/c0mpany.. -- christmas greeting in a foreign language... cool...
2. mery xmas! nla pud louella, imo papa bianca brumel! -- this one's from chammy, so sweet to know he knows everyone in my family (my pop's name is leonidas, by the way)
1. A boy was asked "Did u get everything u wanted for christmas?" He said, "Nope. But then it's not my birthday but HIS, isn't it?" -- exactly!

and the most outragaeous message is:

Nag community singing na mig "Joy To the World"!!! GET ME OUTA HEEERE! PLEEEEEZ!

to all the people who sends me these messages, thank you for adding color to my holiday. and to you who is reading this, thank you, too. God bless you!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

to gladys

it's an age-old story
of a love that has ended
before it has begun,
but allow me the temerity
of retelling it
on kodak xtralife paper

she only wished to know him more
than how he allowed himself
to be known,
she only wished to portray
the scene she has time
and
again
played in her mind

of the swift waves
of the nasty sand
of the moonlit night
of the bikini she bought just for the occassion

she had chased him in between deep breaths
she had played the game
she had been a faceless warrior
bereft of shame

but he will not allow himself
to be known,
instead he ran away
to a place she will not go

and now it has ended,
sad that he had not known
that for a good nine months
he and she (for there is no 'they')
have shared a story
on kodak xtralife paper

christmas party

christmas party

if there is one thing i like about the block now, it's the lack of pretensions. not that i hated the block before, but i love the block more now. people are freer to talk about anything, they feel comfortable with themselves, they suddenly like decided to get rid of any preconceived notions of themselves (and each other) and just basically hang.

Act I
Setting: Seajoy Seafood Restaurant (how's that for a name?!), around
7pm to 10pm

Scene I
after a record-breaking attempt to ditch traffic, my brother managed to get me at the venue thirty minutes late. right, like it mattered. when i got there, there was a total number of two people, myself included. gradually people started coming in in trickles.

Scene II
ms wade arrived and the first of five reserved tables got full. conversation started and the topics varied from yucky food to the inevitable SEX talk (what was that again about conversations always ending at this topic?). leave it to dick to supply all the details of all possible acts of intimacy, including one suspiciously named after a kitchen utensil.

Scene III
everyone came and we prayed then ate. ms wade ordered red wine for everyone, and i heard complaints that it tasted like medicine. hahaha. come to think of it, it did. but ali seemed to enjoy it. i remember what jimvic said that the taste for liquor and wines is an acquired taste: they don't really taste great, they taste like good times. ah.

Scene IV
chika minute with mari. this was the part where people talked about anything on top of their head. it was great except that mari decided to call on unsuspecting people to share their thoughts and feelings (jerah! camille! faculty!). sir ralph said our batch is intelligent (ha, nailad ka sir). ms wade said our batch was the best, recounting the preposterous ok-ok incident.

Scene V
manito-manita! this year, after the traumatic a-gift-from-the-heart number last year, we decided to bounce back with a charade-inspired manito-manita. it was very funny. imagine guessing a manit's gender from four choices: girl, boy, pagirl-girl and paboy-boy. hahaha. and that's just the gender!

(crizzy, bless her heart, gave me the bob marley Legend cd. thanks crizzy, too bad you couldn't make it to the party. thanks.)

Scene VI
photo op. an interesting side note: gladys got her picture taken with sir ralph. attagirl!

Act II
Setting: K1 Family Videoke, crossroads, banilad. around 1030pm to 130am.

Scene I
waited, waited and waited for a room. the group was divided into three: the aiko-ali group who were drinking beer, the maemae-alain group who were playing truth or consequence and then reverted to charades later on, and the kim-raneil group who were talking about nanie's battery-operated lollipop swirler (there's no other way of describing it). i belonged to the last group.

to prove his undying love to kim, raneil showed us some magic trick which involved two rubber bands and a hand. gladys made a nasty comment which involved nanie's battery-operated lollipop swirler and some self-love. they wanted me to teach nanie the "hula" song, but i decided not to. i was really in the mood to teach everyone the "mah-chapeta" song, but i guess nobody wanted to hear it.

Scene II
yay! we got a room. it was the same room we had during the tribu after-party. we sang and sang and sang. gladys sang her all time favorite song: i've never been to me. attagirl! when she got to the monologue part, i really felt she was telling me HER story. it almost made me cry.

all the songs we sang during the tribu after-party were basically revived. too many walls, smooth, barely breathin. while singing 214 i caught banne having a MOMENT. yup, leave it to rico blanco to cause an otherwise contented individual to suddenly crave for something (or someone -- chika minute!) she can never have. i shall hitherto address to this phenomenon as the 214 MOMENT.

it wasn't really until the Sheryl Crow (pronounced She-ryl' as in Sheryl Cruz) songs came up when we really brought the house down (did i just write 'brought the house down'?!). hahaha! that was fun. everyone was on his/her feet screaming the chorus of 'if it makes you happy'. at one point a waiter came in as everybody shouted 'then why the hell are you so sad' and, i tell you, i have never seen a more genuine look of shock on anybody's face before! hahahaha!

Scene III
gladys once again had her picture taken with sir ralph. this time, sir draped his arm around our gladys. can you say Merry Christmas?

Scene IV
time to go. sir gave us 500 bucks and we pooled money to defray expenses (did i just write 'defray expenses'?!). nobody wanted to go home as it was almost time for Simbang Gabi. i took the leftover pizza and wrapped it in tissue paper.

Act III
Setting: East, West cafe. Ayala Center Cebu, 130am to 230 am.

Scene I
we arrived and nobody wanted to serve us food because the kitchen was already closed. later on, the staff decided the cook can still be bitch-slapped to consciousness so we can order food. yay!

Scene II
nanie and i decided to order beer and a lumpia/sausage/ham number. everybody else ordered strong coffee. awit ordered pasta because she was hungry. i discretely unwrapped the leftover pizza and nanie and i ate it corkage-fee-free.

Scene III
dick decided to go home. i think he felt guilty because he had to go to church. ryan went with him. astrid was really sleepy, she almost forgot to pay.

Scene IV
beer breath, while virtually unknown to the breather is almost always noticeable from within a two-feet radius from said breather.

Scene V
everyone parted ways in a cacophony of Merry Christmas greetings.

Act IV
Setting: taxi, on the road, 230am to 3am.

Scene I
nanie, reggie and i decided to share a cab. when we entered the car, we were greeted by a most beautiful voice emanating from the car speakers. after much milling about as to who the artist was, we finally decided to ask the driver. 'bamboo,' he said. whoa! beautiful album. just perfect. bamboo early in the morning.

Fin

[thanks a lot to nanie for the pictures. you can check her out at static perspective.]

overcompensating

"The fabric of reality is stitched together with a fine thread of lies. 'No more tears shampoo' won't stop the pain." -Jeffrey Rowland

huh? wha? i love this guy's talent! check him out.

seasons of mao

after waiting for almost an hour for her, i dragged my mother to Big Mao for some good 'ol chow down. funny thing, my mother, she loves good food but she has trouble eating anything that (1) she cannot pronounce, (2) she cannot cook herself, (3) did not resemble anything she would actually recognize in its natural state, and (4) is not too salty, too sweet, too sour, in short, something that will not give you an ailment ten years after consumption. but because of some consistent referrals from friends to try the place out for some weeks now, i finally gave in to my inner connoisseur and took a bite off the Big Mao, to the dismay of my mother.

allow me the indulgence of a critique.

upon entering the place, my mother immediately declared the food bad since there were very few people dining. the fact that it was four in the afternoon was lost in her. we were greeted by a smiling waitress who promptly greeted us and directed us to a corner table. i hated the fact that the whole interior design was of the same color as my mother's uniform -- orange. it was like she totally belonged there! the whole play on my psyche was all too familiar: it has long been discovered that orange has the tendency to make a person hungry. hmmm...

waitress once again arrives with the menu and introduced herself as Em-em. like, "before anything else, my name sir-maam, is Em-em". Ooo-kay, Em-em, my name is brian and this is my beautiful mother louella, we are very glad to meet you... before anything else. i'm not kidding. she really introduced herself.

as i was not particularly hungry, i ordered the seasonal mixed vegetables (i like veggies), japanese siomai (i love siomai, and a japanese rendition is just too intriguing), and scallop and shrimp dumplings (... why not!). Em-em took notes, repeated the order and left with the customary expression, "for a while, sir-maam".

what is it with the whole sir-maam idea?! after careful philosophizing, i have come up with three probable reasons: (1) Em-em thinks i am a hermaphrodite, a veritable he-she. the whole while, she had been referring to me and me alone, for she has not seen my mother who was completely camouflaged by the interior design. (2) Em-em thinks my mother and i are one person, i.e., we are one and the same, therefore we, as one entity, must not be given the distinctive pause between 'sir' and 'maam'. (3) Em-em is sick and tired of the more common variation 'maam-sir'.

after three minutes, Em-em returns to the table. "I would like to apologize, sir-maam. but we cannot serve the seasonal mixed vegetables." I told her that was too bad and asked her why. she said the ingredients have not been delivered that day. i asked for another copy of the menu and was quite intrigued with one item: ‘mixed vegetables’. i inquired what the difference was between 'seasonal mixed vegetables' and 'mixed vegetables'. Em-em informed us that the former has seasonal vegetables while the latter did not. this greatly intrigued me, as (1) the Philippines does not have a seasonal climate and (2) we do not have seasonal vegetables as a result. Maybe that is why there were no seasonal vegetables delivered that day. mother ordered the other vegetable mix variation anyway.

the food arrived and mother hated the dumplings, ate one japanese siomai (which turned out to be just siomai but wrapped in sushi seaweed wrap) and ate all the broccoli and cauliflower from the veggie dish. oh well. thirty minutes into the dinner i forgot the food and was totally caught up in the conversation. it was a pretty shallow conversation.

that should speak something of the food.

children's hour

i went to volunteer for the children's hour 'a weekend for the children' at the ayala last weekend. i didn't do much really, i was stationed in a booth selling children's hour caps. the idea was to get people to donate money to the unfortunate kids. in exchange, they can get freebies. you can say it's basically selling stuff, but that's just you. if we get a donation of 200 to 299 pesos, we give the donor a free cap and a chance to choose the cap's color: white or brown.

in my shift (11am to 4pm), my partner and i were able to sell 10 caps. that's some 2000 smackeroos for the kids. right, it's not much. where could a measly 2 grand get the hungry? fortunately, children's hour does not rely on baseball caps alone. there's the company donations (all totalling 2 million last weekend), and all the donations from all the donors' hours.

donors' hours?

you see, the idea works this way: in your regular nine to five job, you can donate an hour of your earnings to the children(hence the name). an hour is really not that much, considering you spend almost an hour a day fixing yourself, eating quick snacks, chatting with co-workers, aimlessly spinning your chair until you puke -- and all these in company time! i don't know about you, but you weren't actually hard at work during this hour.

getting people to donate is really not as easy as it looks. first, you have to smile all the time so people will generally feel that you are a very happy person who is very glad to meet them. after you have acquired their volatile attention with your gleaming white teeth, you then begin the obligatory small talk, "Donate to Children's hour, sir? You could get a cap, you know." After this, you can then wallow in shame and humiliation as people after people nod, refuse, or worse, simply turn away. really, it was embarrassing. but soon, you muster enough confidence, or desensitivity, to do it over and over again.

with all the people i "met" last weekend, i was able to come up with a demographic of people who are most likely to donate money to needy children. it's not the caucasian foreigners, they simply smile at you and move along in a hurry. it's not the asian foreigners, they simply ignore you (it could be in their travel brochures to ignore the locals who attempt to make a conversation). it's not the rich chinese families, they hate delay. it's not even the rich filipino individuals of the hoity-toity sort, they would rather pretend to talk with each other and look at me like a vermin. believe it or not, it's the middle-class filipinos who are most likely to donate. you know, those types of families who go to the malls together in droves, dressed simply in shorts or jeans, without the least pretentions. they listen to what you have to tell them, ask about the project, and then get a kick out of fitting the caps and then annoying each other as to what color doesn't suit them.

proof that when it all boils down to it, only we can look after each other.

was it good for you, too?

it certainly was for me. the long break from blogging that is. anyway, i'm back and i certainly hope i can stick with this. after all, i have just gotten pass my 150th hit mark! ha! and you said nobody's reading! take that banne, suck it all in!

been up to so many things lately. i can't tell you every nasty thing, though. but i will be glad to share with you TEN THINGS I LEARNED WHILE I WAS NOT BLOGGING:

1. i can sing a pretty mean rendition of "Too Many Walls"
2. the dynamics of friendship, however stable (as in bestfriend material) or shallow (as in 'hi-hello' terms), will inevitably change after knowing one friend has a crush on the other. note that the operative word is 'change': for the good or bad, time alone can tell
3. you can never get rid of viruses until you get a good anti-virus software
4. jay leno is a funny guy, but conan o'brien is too hilarious for his own good
5. an old tire will magically transform into a great christmas wreath if you have a cool father with some of the pre-correctional martha stewart's genes
6. babies will laugh at you if you look funny
7. it sucks when people tell you the truth in your face
8. guilt hurts like hell
9. the true test of a person's patience is a non-working clicker (formerly remote control). it can also test how many expletives a person knows
10. the speed travelled by a car upon a sudden turn is directly proportional to the nerves one gets upon discovering that the steering wheel is very difficult to control during said turn. note to self: slow down when turning

there you go.

i should really be writing about christmas

41 days before christmas and i still don't feel it. i don't know why, but it certainly couldn't be ME! i think christmas has not been manifesting itself well enough these days. and if it has, i think it's some pretty weird manifesting it's making.



for instance, my pop and i recently had our ceremonial "take out the christmas lights and fix the burnt out ones" tradition. we fell all over ourselves searching for damaged blinkers and exposed livewires only to lose heart in the end because of theft and robbery. yes, you read it right, theft and robbery. you see, we initially wanted to put the lights around the bush infront of the house to create the decor of a well-lit christmas garden. but neighborhood kids -- for some weird reason -- are in the habbit of plucking the little light bulbs away. the result is a christmas garden with only a couple of lights blinking merrily among themselves. from afar, they look like two stranded fireflies. the all-fixed up lights are now sitting idly in a cabinet.

then there was the case of the lost christmas tree. mama, who is usually the officer-in-charge of interior decorations, can't seem to find our old christmas tree -- the one we carefully disassembled and stashed away in some box last year. now, it's gone. whoever took it could be happily decorating it by now. or he could have sold it to some people who desperately needed a christmas tree. or he could have dismounted the little branches and made himself a halloween costume. we can only speculate.

and what's the deal with the weather, huh? it's even hotter than summer! gladys said it's because of the el niño. niño or no niño, we all deserve a cool christmas, or at least not an insanely hot one. this is the time to bring out the jackets, and the long-sleeved shirts and the dark-colored sweatshirts. and it doesn't mean you have to SWEAT on them!

and then there were the carollers last week. as i arrived home, i was greeted by some 5 to 6 kids shouting "May'ng Pasko! (Merry Christmas!)" to whoever they thought was inside the house. but nobody was inside, and as i was opening the gate to get in, they harangued me with their "greetings." knowing i (1) did not have any money, (2) did not hear their songs as i just arrived, and (3) did not like their conduct which was borderline rude, i said the customary reply, "Dugay pa ang Pasko, balik lang mo! (It's still a long time 'till Christmas, just come back soon!)."

"Kanus-a man? (When exactly?)" i was shocked to get a reply.

"Inig ka-Pasko (On Christmas day)," irked, i said.

"Dugaya pa ana oi! (That's too late!)".

exactly. whoever told you you were not too early to carol, kids?

ancestors, we invoke thee

a couple of months ago, i was able to channel the spirit of the great Tamriel god of ancestry, Xarxes. during the brief encounter (which, strangely enough, arrived while i was eating burger steak in Jollibee), Xarxes revealed to me the ancestry of four of my close friends and myself. the revelation was staggering, their truth made known only in some of our physical attributes. with great care, i shall share with you this revelation from divinity.

ernie james is of Spanish descent. well, this is not that unpredictable, considering ernie's grandmother (Mamang Patiño) is an española who speaks fluent español. ernie looks unmistakably like a spaniard. when ernie james enters any generic filipino barrio, you half expect the inhabitants to run amock screaming, "ang mga guardia civil, paparating!" Xarxes also revealed that from now on, ernie james shall adopt the song "livin la vida loca" as his personal anthem. Xarxes did not reveal if he has a penchant for ricky martin.

vanessa hails from an Indian ancestry. Indian, as in those living in India. this too does not come as a surprise. bunga's indian features have always caught everyone's attention, thereby prompting the II-Palma students to bestow upon her the distubingly provocative role of "court dancer" in their production of Aladin. as bunga danced her belly out in her rendition of Arabian Nights almost five years ago, i knew she was Indian. but i did not tell Xarxes this, lest he smite me with a ricky martin cd album. he then revealed banne's theme song: the theme song of the ginebra "bilog ang mundo" ad. the title escaped me, as Xarxes was busy dancing himself to its dizzying rhythm.

chamar is Chinese. i did not see the significance of this mind-boggling disclosure at first but then Xarxes directed my attention to chamar's Confucius-like goatie. indeed, upon seeing chammy's shoulder-length goatie (which is unusually straight for a goatie), he immediately invoked the vision of a chinese horde in attack stance ready to fight the mongolians. i asked the Illustrious One if chammy's mutant powers of sweating profusely after consuming large amounts of spicy food had anything to do with chammy's being chinese, but then Xarxes only looked at me and said that he hated spicy food, too. (sometimes, Xarxes could be just as incoherent as he is unfathomable). Xarxes then launched into a song, "Make a Wish" by the taiwanese sensation Hua Xi Lei, indicating that it was to be Chammy's theme song.

i was Italian. Xarxes revealed that i am descended from a line of rich Italian blue bloods of the hoity toity sort. He revealed unto me a vision of a castle which he said were the home of my ancestors. i did not believe this, i told him, since i do not feel Italian nor do i feel any "lukso ng dugo" whenever i watch Molto Mario on tv. He threatened to pull each one of my beard hair if i do not believe him. Xarxes said that my beard itself was evidence enough of my ancestry. he, however, did not give me any song since he said he did not speak Italian. huh?

gladys, now this is a difficult case. i swear i thought Xarxes' revelation was that gladys was a true-blooded Filipino. however, now that i have told them, gladys claims i am wrong. to her credit, now that i try to remember, Xarxes was suddenly disturbed as he was giving his vision of gladys. the result was mumbling audio and blurry video. i tried to sort the words out and managed to make out "pandaca pygmea", "bahay kubo", and "aeta". i thought then that the deity was referring to Filipino. gladys, perhaps with a bout of jealousy over our foreign bloods, berated me with insults with a strength of a thousand amazon women. until now, she claims she is Brazillian.

the death of petunia

four days: that's how long Petunia stayed with me. in that four days, she swam, ate and frolicked in her little fishbowl like the little darling that she was. she gave everyone at home happiness, however brief, upon watching her do the things she did. now she is gone.

as far as i can think of, i did not do anything that might have contributed to her death. i fed her regularly, and took her outside the house whenever i would launch aggressive offensive assaults on mosquitoes with my trusty baygon insect repellent. i also talked to her whenever i can, to the dismay and consternation of my worried parents.

last tuesday, as i was steaming pork dumplings for lunch, i noticed that Petunia wasn't her usual self. she wasn't swimming fast enough and her dorsal fins were somehow not in unison with each other as they moved. i knew something was wrong. before you can say "here fishy fishy," she was floating helplessly on her side.

what happened next was a series of futile attempts at fish first aid too painful to recount.

she died at exactly 3pm of November 2. All Soul's Day.

i took her out of her bowl and wrapped her in newspaper. i could not take it to myself to dump her in the trashcan. so i flushed her down the toilet. crude, yes, but what is there to do. As she swirled around the flushing waters, i threw the remains of her hydrilla on the water. <*sniffs*>

now Petunia's empty fishbowl sits silently on the corner of my room: an empty tomb to her memory.

compsci jokes

My friend's 15-year-old son was chatting on the Internet, and, like many, began to exaggerate his accomplishments. He came running into the study and blurted to his father, "Dad, I'm talking to this girl in a chat room. I told her I'm a first-year university student and she asked me what my major is. What should I tell her?"

"How about journalism?" his father replied, smiling wryly.

Moments later, the boy returned and excitedly announced, "I can't believe it -- she's a swimsuit model!"

----

Powering up my office computer one morning, I saw a unique error message: "Keyboard undetected."

Then I saw how I was supposed to clear the error: "Press any key to continue."

---

A man walks into a Silicon Valley pet shop to buy a monkey. The store owner shows him three monkeys and begins, "The one on the left costs five hundred dollars."

"Why so much?" the customer wants to know.

"Because," the shopkeeper explains, "he can program a computer in 'C.'"

"What about that monkey?" the man asks indicating the next animal.

"He costs fifteen hundred dollars because he knows how to program in Visual C++ and Object-Relational technology."

The startled patron then inquires about the third monkey.

"He's worth three thousand dollars," the store owner replies.

"Three thousand dollars!" the man exclaims. "What can he do?"

"To be honest." the merchant confesses, "I've never seen him do a thing, buut he calls himself a consultant."

something fishy

I bought a fish. A goldfish. I have always wanted one. Her name is Petunia. I love her.

UPS was supposed to volunteer to this Feeding Program in Zapatera, but it was canceled on the last minute. So I had nothing to do for a whole morning. I decided to put into action my long overdue plan of buying a fish. I asked Jason and Ogdoc to come with me to SinHiaPing (I’m not sure with the spelling). They agreed and so off we went.

SinHiaPing is an old Chinese district in Colon renowned for its aquarium-type fishes. If you are planning on making an aquarium for a project, do not go to the malls to buy materials. The Cebuanos have long known the secret of cheaply priced fishes in SinHiaPing. Almost anyone I know with an aquarium got the fishes from there.

I bought a fishbowl for P80, fish food for P5, hydrilla for P2, and Petunia for P15. Neat, huh? Of course, these were all haggled prices, except for Petunia. The guy we bought her from was impervious to Ogdoc’s business talk. Oh well. I’d like to believe that you can never put a price tag on love. Well, maybe you can but the price is nonnegotiable.

Ogdoc and Jason urged me to buy a pair, but I wanted only one. I think that’s the point of an aquarium. If anything, it means solitude.

On our way home, we found a fish struggling for its life on the sidewalk. I grabbed it and looked for where to put it. A girl told me to just put it back in the bucket with the other fishes. Jason was confused why the fish jumped out of the water. I took a quick glance at Petunia inside the plastic bag.

I was really concerned if goldfishes can live on mineral water. I kept on asking the vendors if they do, all said yes. But I doubted them. After all, they were there for business. When I got home, Jason helped me put her in the bowl of mineral water. Petunia, God bless her heart, is still alive.

gamers unite

As one of the early settlers in our village, my family used to put up with the features of a new neighborhood, such as the lack of electricity and water. As a result, television was basically a luxury and you have to fetch water from the nearest artesian wells (there were two) if you want a hearty bath. This lasted for two to three years – that would be when I was 3 to 5 years old.

The lack of these necessities notwithstanding, I remember happy scenes of a bustling neighborhood. The absence of television and, hence, anything better to do, would inevitably result to communal activities. The manangs (old moms) would play mah-jong ever so often; the pops would, well, they would be too tired working their 8 to 5 jobs, so most just rested; and the kids would gather around and play games. Faced with the prospect of nothing to do, we turned to each other.

If you ask me what scenes I still remember of the olden times, I would say the many patintero, buwan-buwan (I don’t know the English counterparts), and other street tournaments held on our streets. Usually these were held during full moon when the streets were bathed with moonlight. Every kid played, no one was excluded. As long as you can run and tag people, your were in. Even weird introverted kids like me played. I remember, we would all be too noisy that our parents would give up trying to sleep and just go out and watch us. Most of them would then grab their bangko (stools) and gossip about whatnots.

All night long, smelly sweaty kids would shout, run, cry, laugh and tumble endlessly as parents watch on. Sometimes the parental units would even cajole and tease us. They were also asked to settle disputes on the technical aspect of the games – having mastered the games themselves in their childhood, they were the resident experts (of course, they wouldn’t always agree with each other).

Those were happy times. Fun times! They no longer exist nowadays in my neighborhood. You will no longer hear kids playing outside. The manangs no longer have their nightly sessions of board games. The streets no longer bear the markings of the familiar patintero grids.
In a way, I feel the new generation of kids have it badly. They missed what I would consider a big part of childhood. But then again, I may just be an old rut.

I asked Jason and Ogdoc where the kids are these days. We thought about it and we concluded that they are not in the streets because they are 1) watching television and 2) in the internet cafes, playing multi-player, networked RPG’s. The TV I can understand, I watch TV myself longer than what’s good for me. But computer games? Are you kidding me?

I guess this is what they call the generation gap. (Sheesh … when I say “generation gap” before, I used to belong to the younger side of the gap.) I guess that’s where kids play these days, not in moonlit streets but in darkened cafes lit by the eerie glow of monitors. They no longer evade their opponents persistent tags to score a “home”, they evade bullets and rocket launchers to win a terrorist virtual war.

I don’t envy them.

Then again, I may just be an old rut.

how true, how true

this is from the artcle "Why Are Americans So Unhappy When They Have It So Good?" by the writer Peggy Noonan, originally published in Reader's Digest (September 1993):



"Somewhere in the '60s and '70s we started expecting to be happy, and changed our lives - left town, left families, switched jobs - if we were not. And society strained and cracked in the storm.

"Why? We have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated - that, in a way, life is overrated. We have lost, somehow, a sense of mystery about us, our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" one. We are among the first generations of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such - unhappiness. The reason: you do not believe in another, higher world, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness, then if the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you despair."

one of the reasons why i like reading is because i get to hear what other people has to say. i guess that is the key to understanding: hearing out. (if only we try to hear each other out, i'm sure it'd be a cinch to undersand people and be understood.) more often than not, what people say could be too uniquely intense to ignore. this particular essay that i qouted above speaks so much truth that i would like to share it with anyone who cares to read. see, i didn't realize this until i read it. i was stunned by its veracity, i hope you were, too.

the cult of the realist

in my almost four years stay here in UP, i have come to realize that one can divide the school into two: not the poor and the rich, not the blues and the reds, not even dean's-listers and the, well, iskolars ng bayan. the two fundamental divisions are the IDEALISTS and the REALISTS.



i belong to the former. i am most definitely not a realist. i might not be sure about many things about me, but i am with this one. i am a true-blooded idealist. i am not sure if there are many of us in UP, but with the few people i know who are like me, one can construct a prototype of a typical idealist: he is usually immersed in his books, he seldom goes out to rallies and demonstrations and he is a dreamer. it's not that my ilk and i are apathetic, God knows we are not. it's just that the noise and aggression commonly associated with the UP-type activism are not exactly the soil and sunshine our ideas thrive in. we dream of peace, understanding, respect and holy silence. as Gandhi once said, "you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist."

over time the realists have been subtly changing the mindset of the university. as new iskolars enter the school, they are bluntly bombarded with the revolutionary ideas poised as answers to the social realities of poverty, injustice, oppression, ad nauseum. (true these are in fact realities, but are they all that is REAL in today's society?) realists go around demanding, shouting in the streets, exposing injustices and demanding justice.

as an idealist, i am not sheltered from these truths. i do believe in the reality of these things. one need not shun the real world to be an idealist. the main difference, i think, lies in how people think these problems must be solved. in this aspect, the realists become divided further into two subgroups.

the realists-slackers believe there is nothing much to be done. they accept the situation and, well, slack off. they feel action is futile -- nothing will change anyway.

the realist-radicals believe that in order for all these problems to stop, there has to be a radical change in the society. many propose communism, some propose a change of leadership, i know of one who continually pushes for monarchy (who will be king?). what ever the solution is, there has got to be a BIG change.



we idealists believe in little changes. we believe in lending out a helping hand. we believe in creating a change in people. we cannot change the world by changing the order of things, we change it by changing the people who make up the world. and soon enough, the people will change the order of things around them. better said than done, yes. but we can at least try. we are not idealists for nothing.

and so my ilk and i go around orphanages and feeding undernourished kids. we go around underprivileged schools and offer a book or two. we go around drug rehabs and talk to people about their problems. we go to church and pray to God for help and assistance. we go everywhere, but not in rallies and demonstrations. there where noise and aggression reign.

i once told a friend about the Galing Pilipino Movement (The Philippine Ability Movement). It is an organization which aims to uncover what is it about the Filipinos that make us great (now let's talk about idealism!) and then honoring those who have done great deeds in the community. i told her that every month during the GPM's meetings, they start with a prayer and then ushers hand out newspapers for everyone. and then one by one, the members are asked to read aloud a good news from the paper. isn't that great! she scoffed at what i told her and said in a most realist-slacker air: "Too idealist for me. Binayot man na! (It's too dandy!)"

i looked at her and smiled. we belong to the same political party in school, but she is from a different cult.

reader's digest

question: what are two things that Reader's Digest is best known for?
answer: make people laugh and cry

so i was sitting around my bro's new rented house one afternoon, when i beheld a vision. it was a sight too good to be true: hidden inside an obscure book shelf are stacks and stacks of RD issues some dating as far back as 1981! can you say, "hours and hours of reading time over the sem break?"

how cool is that?

i'm sure all of us still remember RD. in the age of webzines, blogging, and e-books, RDs are a welcome change. and nobody does inspirational stories better than the people who contribute to RD. i know the stigma of a grown man crying is still pretty hard to swallow these days, but what the hey. i cry everytime i read one of those "rekindling the human spirit" mushy stories, it's my achilles' heel. and my, were there many in RDs.

and check out the joke departments! hehehe.

here's one really funny joke from Virtual Hilarity:

Little Girl to Friend: "I'm never going to have babies."
Friend: "Why is that?"
Little Girl: "I hear they take nine months to download."

hahaha.

great words

"You may give children your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."
-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

bossa nova

i recently bought an mp3 cd with the title Bossa Nova: An Introduction to Brazilian Music. it was a pirated copy of course but who can resist a cd like that?

here's a description of the genre: "bossa nova compositions often spoke of love, the beach, and beautiful women and seemed to be a depiction of the author’s bohemian life rather than a tale of Brazilians’ daily struggles as usually happened with samba, a music genre popular among the working class (Isabel Viana)." it's absolutely beautiful. of course i didn't understand most of the songs in the cd but the rhythm spoke more than just lyrics.

listening to bossa nova gives you a natural high. it gives you the allusion that you are in a cafe somewhere sunny, drinking coffee while the locals pass you by. like you just woke up from an afternoon siesta and are on your way to the beach to meet friends. it's so weird! it ought to be lumped with weed and cocaine as a prohibited substance.

Peer to peer schizophrenia

sem break officially started at the point when the file "send.txt" was transmitted from one computer of rm 244 to another with an IP address of 10.48.1.26 through server socket port number 5793. when our datacom instrutor saw for himsel that my group and I successfully implemented peer to peer file transfer my fourth year first sem college life ended. at that point, i was officially rid of any anxieties and nervousness that accompanied the finals week.

let me tell you something about the finals week. it is an evil week. a week you will perpetually hate for all your life. you look at the kids suffering in Africa and you will know exactly what they feel after going through the finals week, after having subsisted on nothing but water and ngohiong just because a decent meal takes way too long. you hear some of your psych major friends talk about abnormal psychology and get surprised why you have some symptoms of "accute schizophrenia," only to realize that you haven't slept for four days straight.

but now we're good. we're holding up. the week is over and we have a full threeweeks ahead of us. weeks without deadlines, functional requirements, System.out's, and overnight stays. it's about time.

crying baby

wacky left home. in case you forgot, wacky is my lactose-free baby nephew. he finally left home bacause my pop can't take his crying spells anymore. to say that he is one loud baby is an understatement. he just keeps on crying. and he never stops! my mom doesn't know what to do with him. his mom, too. one time, his mom cried because he won't stop crying. imagine that!

so he left. my brother took his baby bag (the one with all his baby stuff), sterilizer and all things baby from our house and left for their house. now our house is de-babified. i won't be missing wacky though, they just live a block from our house.

now there are only three people living in our house: mom, pop and me. i have a whole room to myself and i don't know what to do with it. banne suggested i decorate it 70's style. yeah right.

hagbong sa softeng

hahay. so it came to pass that THE wade had a Quiz Bowl type exam in Soft Eng. right, like that would make a huge difference! as for me and my group, we were the victims of the culmination of three plus nights with no sleep - sleep. hence, no serious studying took place.

but i am already resolved that i won't castigate myself for sleeping when i should have studied. heck, i was sleeping! i wasn't doing drugs. sleeping is a basic human necessity. i won't apologize for being human.

guess we'll just do really good in the project.

study sa ko

its 950pm, and i still have to study for the Soft Eng finals tomorow. i like this time, all's dark and quiet.

study sa ko.

lactose intolerance

tsk tsk tsk. we just found out my nephew is lactose intolerant. that's the reason why he kept on crying for two weeks straight - the first two weeks of his stay here on earth. we recently got him some lactose-free milk, and i think it'll be more peaceful nights ahead from now on.

this isn't much of an issue really, except that he probably got his lactose intolerance from me - the proverbial uncle. my mom never believed in this condition - she would accuse me of faking it just so i could pass on milk. she laughed at me when i said my tummy hurts like hell every time i drink the pesky white stuff. this time, though, she takes me seriously. us - if you count my nephew.

down with dairy products.

a first time for everything

this is my first post for this blog. been thinking of making one in a loong time, but i just can't find time. weird though, this is the busiest week this semester, and yet i have chosen tonight to make this blog.

hope this works. i've never been a fan of diaries. makes you feel like you have to beat a deadline everyday or week. but i do like to write. so spare me the deadlines and just give me a clean text area to write on. anytime.

see you around, whoever you are.