in a state of shock

Oh My God. a previous post of mine has seen print on both the philippine daily inquirer's youngblood section and sunstar cebu's weekend magazine on this very same day. the editors of both papers seem to be of the opinion that my words and opinions are worthy of taking space on each of their papers...

i... cannot... believe... it...

WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

shitty

the world sure has a weird way of opening our eyes. i spent much of the past 2 weeks thinking about how shitty my life was when the world gives me a nice kick in the ass and whispers to my ear, "you want to know what shitty is boy? let me show show you what shitty is..."

the realization came to me on my jeepney ride to work this morning. the jeepney was almost full, so i took the first available seat i saw, which was beside a woman carrying a child. i wondered why the kid was unusually fidgety, until i turned my head and saw that he was victim of down syndrome (more commonly known as mongoloid). the sight first overcame me with surprise, and then pity.

as the jeepney sped on its route, i imagined how it would be in the shoes of either the kid or his mother.

imagine you being the kid himself. the forces of fate seems to be arrayed against you. you wonder why people keep looking at you in a weird way, a look of pity, or fear, or just a plain grossed out look on their faces. they look at you as if you were some alien, a creature of from another world.

imagine you being the mother of the kid. imagine carrying the child for 9 months and discovering your child's affliction just moments after a very painful and exhausting delivery. imagine knowing the hard road your child will soon have to tread. imagine sharing the sad load of your child's difficulties and sorrows.

while pity filled me, i also felt guilty about the sense of contentment i was bound to get from knowing their fate. how cruel fate seemed to them, as if they were given those sorrowful set of circumstances so they could be used to teach us ordinary people to be content, as if they were being used as examples for us common people, like criminals doomed to die by a cruel judge called fate.

but inspite of the sorrow, i also saw reasons for joy. the jeepney halted at a crossing, and the child stood still, looked up at his mother's eyes and smiled. the mother smiled back. remembering that sight simply made my day.

sometimes, it takes the shadows to make us see the sunshine.

the chronicles of a bum tummy

a bum tummy forced me to the hospital last thursday. i think it was a combination of not having eaten anything for breakfast because i had to go very early to the doctor, and then eating something bad for lunch. big mistake. by afternoon of thursday i was already puking my guts out. this lost me much of the fluids in my system that i became so dehydrated and my arms, legs, and abdomen started to go numb. the doctor said if i had lasted a bit longer in that state without having been taken to the hospital, i would have suffered kidney damage. panic started setting in. i was so weak physically that i didn't have an ounce of strength to stand up, and my officemates had to carry me out of the building and drive me to the hospital. humiliating experience. i have a bad feeling that everytime my officemates see me they'd think, "hey, that's the loser who puked his guts out and had to be taken to the hospital". oh, the horror.

when we reached the ER of chong hua hospital, it took their staff a full twenty minutes before they arranged a doctor to see me. twenty excruciating minutes. they had to take their sweet time just to make sure that i would be able to pay for the hospitalization. if i wasn't so weak i would have punched the nurse in the gut to make him feel just a tenth of the pain i had so he could get me a doctor quickly. the first thing their nurse asked when i got there was if i had insurance. insurance?! watdapak!!! i'm about to suffer kidney damage here and your asking for insurance?! ironically, the free calendar chong hua gives to admitted patients claims that chong hua was a "non-profit" organization. "non-profit" my ass. if chong hua is "non-profit" then gloria arroyo won the elections fair and square without cheating.

the ER people finally took me inside. one of the ER doctors comes up to me and starts asking me questions, what happened, how many times i vomited, when i started vomiting, what i had eaten, etc., while writing down her notes in an index card. after she finished her questioning she goes to a table at the back. a few minutes later another doctor comes up to me and asks the same set of questions. i thought, "what the hell do these people want to do to me, question me to death?" i had to point out to the new doctor that i had already been asked those questions just to make him shut up, which he mercifully did.

afterwards a nurse comes up to me to attach the needle for the IV fluid on my left hand. the nurse was in his late 20s, and he seemed to be an experienced nurse, so i thought, this shouldn't be that painful. but suddenly he calls out to the interns at the other side of the ER, then asks, "who of you wants to insert the needle?" "you have got to be kidding me...", i thought. unluckily for me, he wasn't. three young looking interns who seem to have just gotten out of puberty come up to me with very eager looks on their faces, as if they were looking at the frog they would be soon be dissecting in their anatomy class. the older nurse then gives the needle to one the interns, who seemed just a bit too excited, so i braced myself for the coming pain. the whole process lasted two very painful minutes. a friendly word of advise to you dear readers, if anyone of you is going to be admitted to a hospital, ask for a more experienced nurse to attach the IV needle. it'll save you from a lot of pain.

and i sure hope that that intern won't be taking what she learned from her anatomy lesson with me abroad. nurses and doctors leaving is the last thing this country needs. but if we also consider how poorly they're being paid here, can we actually blame them? and so, the current dillema.

i was finally taken to my hospital room in chong hua's new building. i have to give it to them, the new building was pretty impressive. it's very big and modern looking, you can actually see that a huge amount was spent for its construction. the new building's lobby looked like a hotel lobby.

my officemate turned ambulance driver nilo and our company nurse grace accompanied me for the night while they waited for my mother. it was already late when my mom arrived, but i was too exhausted from the pain to even talk so i slept through the whole night.

i woke up the next morning eager to see what shows were on cable tv. let's just say i was pretty grateful we didn't have cable tv installed at home. so many channels showing nothing else but crap. they didn't even have discovery channel, only its more boring counterpart, national geographic. there were the news channels (boring...), the sports channels showing a golf tournament (boring..), movie channels showing old or unknown movies (boring...), home shopping networks (getting sleepy...), chinese, indian, french, german channels (zzzzz...), business ads (snore...), and a crazy televangelist declaring that he is the second coming of Jesus Christ and asking for donations for their "kingdom" (you've got to be kidding...). the sports channels didn't even show a single game of the nba playoffs that day. i was starting to get convinced that universe was out to ruin my weekend.

good thing there was axn though, because they had the amazing race on at around noon. i'm rooting for the hippies bj and tyler to win, as they're more fun to watch than the other teams. they kinda' remind me of the clowns of amazing race 6 (or was it 5?). too bad those guys lost, it was weird seeing a grown up man who made everyone laugh just break down and cry on tv.

some officemates also came by to visit around lunchtime, which lifted my spirits a bit, although their visit also reminded me of the office party i was going to miss later that night. so much for the anticipation i had the whole week. i spent the rest of friday desperately trying to find a decent show to watch through all that crap on cable and wondering what everybody at the office was doing and how the party was going. it was purgatory on earth.

my doctor finally gave his discharge orders on the morning of saturday. it felt like a twenty year prison sentence was finally over. i was so happy to finally get out, stretch my legs, and breathe the polluted air of cebu city, considering that i was either lying down or sitting down on my ass about 97% of the time for the last 2 days. freedom at last!

so to all of you boys and girls out there, here's another friendly word of advice: BAWAL MAGKASAKIT!!!

the migration patterns of wildebeest

the "resignation season" has returned to our company. five of my fellow software engineers have resigned, four of them planning to go abroad. a high turn over rate seems to be a natural characteristic of the IT industry. it's so unlike the old days where employees tend to stick to only one or two companies their entire lives. when they retire, they would typically have already given ten to twenty years of their lives working for that company. for software developers these days, they say that the longest you should stay in a company should be only up to two years, after which you should move on. but doing so can also be a pretty enriching experience, as it would expose us to different areas where we can apply our expertise, expanding our very horizons in the process. i myself stayed only three months on my first job, before moving here to my current one.

the previous "resignation season" happened at about the same time a year ago. but none of them left the country. some went to work for IT firms in manila, while the others stayed here in cebu to work for other companies. it's sad to lose fellow officemates to other companies, but it's sadder if you lose them to other countries.

this is not to condemn them or judge them, my fellow employees planning to go abroad, for i myself might be following in their footsteps someday. but is there really no more hope for this country that the middle class and the professionals are all wanting to get the hell out of here? it's not like they're part of the really desperate segment of society who have no other option but to go abroad to work because they can't find a job here and if they do stay they'll starve. they're professional software developers who i think have pretty decent salaries. they most certainly won't starve with their salaries. yes, they may be a bit hard put to pay, say, the mortgage for that house or car while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle, but i think the country really needs them at this point.

imagine this. if all the doctors left, who would treat the sick? if all the nurses left, who would be there to care for the patients? if all the teachers left, who would teach our children? if all the software engineers and programmers left, who would build and maintain the computer systems that have now become critical for the operation of many of our businesses and goverment agencies, if not the country as a whole? if all the software engineers and programmers left, what would be the point of foreign firms investing and outsourcing their IT needs here if there are none of us left? if all the software engineers and programmers left, how are we supposed to move and reach the heights we all want to reach for our nation?

and not to mention the social costs of going abroad, leaving behind families that are going to miss a father or a mother growing up. one of those planning to go abroad is himself a father. i'm pretty sure he has thought long and hard about his decision to leave, as it entails sacrificing his seeing and being with his daughter at the point when she is entering adolescence. it must have been a painful decision for him, a decision which i certainly woudn't want to be forced to make if i do have a family of my own in the future.

but this is not to say that all who go abroad are going their purely for the money. they may be going there for personal reasons i may never know and understand. maybe they just want a new life abroad, away from the pains, problems, and heartaches that might accompany their staying here. maybe they just want to see new places and learn new things. and also, all of my fellow employees who resigned to go abroad are all older than me, so maybe they have more experiences in life to say why they should leave. and to think that some our very own national heroes like Rizal, del Pilar, and the Luna brothers went abroad while working toward their goal of making the motherland a better place.

and i know too, that it is very hard to work for a concept of a country that doesn't seem to work for you. here we all are doing our duties as citizens of this country by following the law and paying our taxes correctly, and what do we get for it? a corrupt system that doesn't even work for us but only for those who are in power, trapos (traditional politicians) who don't respect the most sacred right of a people in a democracy, their vote, and a president so desperate to hold on to power just because she believes she is the only viable alternative to the country and insulting all her fellow countrymen in the process by considering them as a messy mass of barbarians who are unable to govern themselves.

but if you think about it, shouldn't that be bigger reason for us to stay? so that we can help out to fix the system? so that we can fight the power that for so long has entrenched itself into our society? so that we can help make the Philippines more attractive to foreign investment by simply staying here and giving the best we have to offer in our jobs? or do we just leave the fixing and the work to others then come back once things are going on the right track?

it reminds me of the great migration of the wildebeest in the plains of the serengeti in africa. the wildebeest are constantly on the move, seeking places where the grass is greener and more abundant. but once they are done with this pasture, they leave it behind bare and on its own to regenerate.

are we destined to be like the wildebeeste? are we destined to be nomads, a people without a land we can call home? can the Philippines still even exist in a decade or two if we all keep this mindset?

there is one major difference between heroes and wildebeest. it is that even if our heroes did leave, they came back armed with the wisdom and experience gained from their journeys abroad and actually tried fixing things.

but who am i really to say all this. who am i to dictate the direction they would like to take in their lives. who am i to demand heroism from them. maybe i am just being young and foolish. that maybe, come a few more years, i will learn that idealism is overrated, that idealists don't survive in a dog-eat-dog world such as ours. that maybe, come a few more years i myself might become more practical in my thinking and decide to leave as well. but right now, i sure hope to God i don't eat my words. and i also hope that you guys come back.

a flower in the mud: ode to a girl in the jeepney

in the play of light and shadow
was her beauty made manifest

amid the battle
of jeepneys jockeying for passengers
amid the rattle
of the loot in the sacks of scavengers
in the cacophony
of vendors vending
and beggars begging
in the stink of open canal
and garbage uncollected
there across me
she sits pristine
a flower in the mud
and chaos of the city

in the toxic mix
of smoke and dust
her fragrance hits me
like a powerful gust

her body is a perfect landscape
an enchanted landscape
of hills and valleys
i contemplate her in silence

her face baths in light
this moonless night
like a beacon to guide me home

a slight turn of head
and i lose my way
in the mirage of her eyes
captured by this rapture
all i see
is an oasis in the desert
all i see
is paradise in the middle of hell
all i see
is you...

but only to soon
you turn away
why do you hide
your face from me miss?
why begrudge me
a bliss such as this?
where are the altars
built in your name?
tell me, miss
so i may go there
to worship at your feet

but the dream ends and i awake
she gets off her stop
and a sad goodbye i silently make
and to dreary reality i return
leaving with a memory in me that will burn
this memory of a face
that brightened one moonless night

the enemy of my enemy is my friend

i seem to have found an ally in my war against cockroaches. no, not the local pest control people, spiders. i was taking a bath one morning when i found a creature of indeterminate shape in the corner. i have bad eye sight, so i squinted a bit to see what it was. it looked like a spider, with all the legs, but it had something bulging under it. so i came closer and saw that it was cockroach. to my pleasant surprise, the spider seems to have captured it and was in the process of slowly poisoning its victim to death. i stared at the scene for a couple of seconds with a discovery channel like curiosity. so cockroaches do have a natural predator!

i know, spiders, like cockroaches, are considered household pests. but at least spiders don't have the gall to show their ugly mug in front of you almost everywhere in the house. kung sa bisaya pa, di sila pareha kabaga ug nawong sa mga ok-ok, kay wala nay uwaw nang mga ok-oka na. spiders are shy creatures, prefering to hide in the dark shadowy corners away from human detection. so as long as they don't show themselves too much and just remain in the shadows, and they continue doing their job in the campaign of eradicating the earth (or at least our house) of cockroaches, then their co-existence with us humans in our house should be fine by me. it's like a contract killer-client relationship. they hunt down my enemies, and i give them free board and lodging. like kenshin himura, that spider was my very own assassin in the shadows. i think it's what my high school biology teacher would call a symbiotic relationship. and i don't think they're as dirty as roaches anyway.

hooray for spiders!

UPDATE: this is from the world book encyclopedia. "Spiders are helpful to people because they eat harmful insects. Spiders eat grasshoppers and locusts, which destroy crops, and flies and mosquitoes, which carry diseases." so spiders really ARE one of the good guys, they just got themselves a bad rep from all those old disney cartoons.

the ant

one lazy afternoon
it presented itself to me
an ant
slave to sweet sugar
laboring under a load
of breadcrumbs and desperation
i wondered if i should squish it
to bring it out of its misery
and mine
but then an epiphany
are we not but mere ants
in the gaze of the almighty?

Disturb us, Lord

a nice prayer to meditate on this lenten season

#########################################

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

attributed - sir francis drake - 1577

top 10 things i would do if i were declared the king of the philippines

this is another top 10 list. aside from the schtick people usually answer, like ending poverty, making education the number one priority, running after all crooks in government, working on lasting peace and order, etc. (which i myself would intend to do, of course), these are the top 10 things i would do if i were declared the king of the philippines:

10. bring back bobot candy

remember those? if you grew up in the late 80s and early 90s then you'll probably remember those. it's one the icons of my early childhood, those little peanuts coated in a sweet sugary layer in rainbow colors. it was one of the few items i could buy in the sari sari store with the 25 centavo allowance my mother usually gave me. cheap but satisfying. makes me wish i was a child again.

9. have people who answer their cellphones in movie theaters beaten and humiliated in public

i was watching memoirs of a geisha at sm once. when the movie was just about to start a familiar ringing sound suddenly comes out of nowhere, and then the guy to my left pulls out his cellphone and chats away with someone who seemed to be his girlfriend. AAARRGGH... for the next 10 minutes me and my fellow moviegoers discovered more about his love life than the movie's story. if i could hurl thunderbolts at the guy then i would've, but all that came out of me was a very pathetic "ssssshhhh!".

8. start a campaign geared toward the extinction of cockroaches

cockroaches. the scum of the earth, the scourge of humanity. ewww. i hate them with a vengeance. do you know that in the event of a nuclear fallout the last creatures to ever come out of it alive would be cockroaches? plus, they're disgusting little critters. everytime i see them in my house the hunter instinct in me comes alive and down comes my tsinelas (slipper) on the little beast. i know, a simple spraying of baygon is more effective, but not as satisfying as squashing that cockroach to mulch.

7. buy a new refrigerator

our fridge has been broken for weeks already, and i haven't been able to get a nice cold glass of water when i wake up in the morning for a very very loooong time now. what makes it worse is that it's summer. if that isn't hell on earth, i don't know what is.

6. order those trendy cafes like starbucks to sell coffee according to what its actually worth

selling ordinary brewed coffee at 150 pesos a cup is simply criminal...

5. have all inconsiderate smokers who smoke in public without even thinking about those who don't smoke arrested

this is one of my personal pet peeves. you're sitting in a jeepney on the way to work, breathing in a healthy dose of smoke from the morning traffic rush, then the guy beside you lights a cigarette and smokes. you try covering your nose, make coughing noises, frowning, anything to get the message through to that man's probably non existent brain that you do not want him sitting beside you with that cigarette, and yet still he puffs away.

we're already choking from all the smoke belched by those jurrasic jeepneys and those monster factories, but do you people really have to add to all that smoke? yes, this is a free country, and granted, you have the freedom to kill yourselves. but do you have to bring us non-smokers closer to hell together with you?

4. declare a moratorium on those crappy lovey dovey pinoy movies

no wonder the local movie industry is dying, all they keep churning out is crap. i hate the manufactured feel of their so called "love teams". they all look so forced, so artificially sweet so that the viewing public will take notice of their "romance" and watch their damn movie. but the public seems to lap it all up everytime, so what do i know.

3. stop the airing of all showbiz news programs

the buzz, S files, different rooms on the same hell on earth, as one fellow blogger put it. why people give a f*ck about Kris Aquino's latest love affair when we have much bigger problems to think about is simply beyond me. a friendly word of advice to all of you suckers out there: get a life.

2. PLAGIARISTS WILL BE SHOT!!! DEATH TO ALL PLAGIARISTS!!!

i was blog surfing one night when i came across the blog of a person who i sort of knew because she was one year my senior in college and who also happened to be the classmate of my former officemate and the former officemate of one my college buddies. skimming over her blog, i came across one poem, which after my reading it seemed VERY VERY familiar. then it hit me. THAT WAS MY POEM. she took most of the lines, added some of her own, mixed and matched some other lines, then voila, it was suddenly HER poem...

WHAT THE F*CK!!!

the great irony of it is, she works in the software industry, which itself is a victim of piracy, a close cousin of plagiarism. but at least pirates don't claim that they developed the software, the credit is still where it should be. so that makes her worse than pirates.

but then again, imitation is the highest form of flattery, so maybe she thinks my poem IS good :) so from the bottom of my heart, dear plagiarist, i thank you.

UPDATE: ms. plagiarist seems to have deleted her blog... hmmm... does that mean she doesn't like my poem anymore? :)


and the number 1 thing i would do if i were declared king of the philippines:

1. outlaw playing and listening to ANY song by air supply.

man, do i hate their songs. not do i just hate their songs, i detest their songs with a deep loathing. people seem to be playing them everywhere, all the time. i hear their songs in my neighborhood, in jeepneys, in videoke bars, downtown, everywhere. once, when i went out with my officemates for some videoke (yes, i now enjoy singing at the videoke. i take back everything i said about videoke.), they sang "i'm all out of love" by air supply. oh how i had wanted to eat them alive.

in one of their songs, their vocalist shrieks, "i don't know what to saaaaaay! i don't know what to saaaaaaaaaaaay!" tell you what mr. air supply vocalist sir, if you don't know what to say, then SHUT UP ALREADY!

pilipinas, february 2006

despair celebrates
in the stomachs of the hungry
apathy penetrates
those who were once angry

letting go of our patrimony
for the sake of the "economy"
economy, economy, economy

i say,
an economy of crumbs
for the hungry to feast on
while the pigs wallow
in a pen strewn with pearls and diamonds

but where is justice?
has she been forgotten?
or are all their crimes
so easily forgiven?

while the usurper sits on the throne
the voices of dissent
have been made silent
through exercise of fear and force
why do we choose
to stay in this course?
our history's endlessly repeating course?
this farce is too fierce
for mine ears

alas! alas!
is this nation's redemption
a heaven so far
from where we now are?
do we give up and flee
as so many of us have done?

i say,
if we only wake up
i say,
if we only open our eyes
i say,
if we only refuse to be bought

but still,
we choose to sleep
but still,
we choose to remain blind
but still,
we choose to be bought

it's a simple matter of choice
to raise a great and mighty voice
to ring righteous and resonant
in the halls of the palace

it's our palace
not hers
not theirs
ours

paranoia 2006

weird experience. i was riding a jeepney on the way home last night when a guy got on carrying a cardboard box sealed in packaging tape. guy looked quite normal, but suddenly, alarm bells started going off in my head crying, "suicide bomber! suicide bomber!". i think it can be proven that the terrorists are actually the most harmless and ordinary looking people, until they blow themselves and the city block they're in to pieces. this got me watching him nervously, detecting any signs of strange behavior. a few minutes later, he reaches into his pocket and grabs a cellphone. the same alarms bells go off again. this time, i was thinking, "holy crap! he's gonna detonate the bomb through his cellphone!" i spent the rest of the ride home confessing my sins before God. fortunately for me, and for you also my 2 loyal readers, the guy got off before I did without incident, which leaves me to blog about it.

note to self, must stop watching the evening news.

damn terrorists, their making me all paranoid. blast yourselves to bits you freaks.

infinite loop

in response to the clamor of my 2 loyal readers, here is my first post for the year. sorry for the delay, either i was too drunk or too depressed to write anything. and thank you also for letting me know that mine is not a voice in the desert.

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my infinite loop theory

watching the news of the events in the past weeks, i have come to the conclusion that the Philippines is a computer program stuck in an infinite loop. to the non-programmers out there, an infinite loop is basically a set of computer instructions that runs forever. if this nation's history in the past 40 years would be written in computer code, it would come out something like this:

People FilipinoPeople;
while ( true ) {
Government government = FilipinoPeople.EstablishDemocracy( );
while ( FilipinoPeople.Tolerance( ) < government.Corruption( ) ) {
FilipinoPeople.StopCaring( );
government.BecomesMoreCorrupt( );
}
FilipinoPeople.GoToEDSA( );
}

this nation needs to change its programming.

i'm back!

new post on my photoblog: http://imageryofkinit.blogspot.com/2006/03/cityscapes-1.html

And Yet Still, I Come Back : Reflections on the Day of the Dead

I pause before entering, greeted by the sight of old women selling candles, flowers, and prayers, and little children scavenging for the wax of melted candles. It has been a year since I have been here. A year since I last went through these gates, a year since I last gazed on his name carved on his tombstone, a year since I last lit candles in his memory.

As i walk the pathways of the cemetery, I see names and dates of birth and death. R.I.P. in memory of Juan de la Cruz, born 19xx, died 200x, remembrance from his loving family. I noticed that some had lived to a ripe old age, some died while still in the prime of their life, while others did not even reach a year, the light of consciousness never dawning upon their minds. Then I wonder, what were their lives? What were their stories? Did they live wretched and obscure lives or lives honorable and worthy of mention? How did they die? Did they die a glorious and heroic death or did they die slowly and painfully on a hospital bed? Were they able to prepare and come to terms with their own death or did death come to them unexpectedly like thief in the night?

Then I am reminded that soon enough, I too shall suffer their fate. Maybe fifty years from now, maybe next year, maybe tomorrow, but for certain, my name is will find its way on one of those tombstones. It's a scary thought for sure, but I have long resigned myself to it. Some may argue that, hey, we really shouldn't be scared 'cause we've already had plenty of experience being dead, for before we were born, we were all dead. Sure, the argument may make some sense, but once you get a taste of what life is, being dead is just, well, scary. We may all try our darndest (sometimes even to the point of delusion) to believe in an after life, or in reincarnation, or in whatever you believe in, but the only thing we can be certain about is this. That when we do leave this earth, the one thing left of us would simply be a memory. The thought does not comfort me. I continue walking.

I finally reach his tomb. My stepfather's. It's a bit too shabby, to say the least, almost blackend by the dust and the soot of candles. I had hired the services of one of the clean up boys in the cemetery, to rid the the tomb of its rubbish, repaint the lettering with gold and give it a fresh coat of white paint. I almost balk at his price, but i'd rather let him do the job, and it is his season anyway, so I pay up.

The boy does his job quite meticulously, almost in a very caring and loving manner. First he wipes the soot and grime off with a rag soaked in acid, and then very skillfully restores the lettering on the tomb in gold paint. He then takes out his little can of white paint and proceeds to very carefully apply a new coating of white, making sure that it does not go beyond the borders of the tombstone.

As I watch the boy clean up the tomb, a question comes to my mind. I had not grown to love my stepfather. I even have a slight degree of contempt for him, having witnessed some of the weaknesses and flaws in his character. But he is dead now, and it is not up to me to judge, as I too am human. He had come so suddenly into me and my mother's lives, and so suddenly he was taken away, so I had not known who he really was.

So, the question. I had not grown to love him, and yet still, every year, I come back. why?

Is it out of a simple respect for my mother's wishes? Maybe. Oh, how my mother had loved him, inspite of everything. I myself didn't get it (and up to now, I still don't). But hey, when it comes to love, people don't usually think right, right? I've read somewhere that falling in love is the closest thing we ordinary people can get to insanity. But even if I think my mother was insane for choosing someone like him, that does not get over the fact that she is my mother. And as a son who loves and respects here, I obey. So I come. Yet somehow I feel it is something else, something deeper.

Then it occurs to me. Could this be why I had been asking all those questions as I passed all those other tombs? Could it be because of my fear that some sort of karma will hit me, that I too when I die will be another forgotten name in an obscure tomb in some public cemetery, unknown and unremembered?

Is this the reason then that we all flock to the cemeteries in this season of candles and remembrances? So that in the passing of the years, as people continue to remember their dead, we too might be remembered after we die? Oh, how hard it is to contemplate being forgotten. All our achievements, all our hardships, everything we have ever been or done would seem to be for naught. So in the face of this reality so hard to swallow, are we merely holding on to this tradition as if it were some sort of security blanket from our fear of being forgotten? For when we are forgotten by the living, then that is when we are truly dead.

Then I remember something I read from one of neil gaiman's sandman books. "What do the dead care what happens to them? Eh? They're dead. All the trappings of death are for the living. It is the final reconciliation. The last farewell." Indeed.

Thus next year, I will come back. And the year after that, and the year after, assuming that I am still alive. I will keep on coming back, as we all have been doing, generation after generation. For it is not just for our dead, it is for us too.

ethereal encounters

my thoughts are like rain, falling to the ground making puddles, as i struggle to form the words. a kind of madness has enveloped me, shaking me to the core, to the foundations of my existence. the sun rises and sets, the tides rise and ebb, the moon waxes and wanes, yet i find there is something amiss in the cycles of the cosmos, something missing.

long have i wandered the streets in search for it, through the backways and sidestreets, in the long winding corridors of the city, yet at the end of the day i come back empty. i ponder what it is i am searching for.

then in the distance, in the emptiness of night, an apparition, whose radiance fills it to overflowing. a curious awe fills me, as i slowly make my approach, like a moth seduced by the flame. there i discover a daughter of the deities.

she greets me by my first name, which stuns me with wonder. who am i, an ordinary mortal, for her to call by name? surely she must be a gift from the heavens. i am dumbstruck, for my speech has left me.

she reveals to me wonders and mysteries that i can only dream of. she made me realize that there are powers beyond what we can see and touch. she made me realize what forces move this world and make life, painful and insignificant as it may seem, still possible.

alas, all good things come to an end. she goes on her way, and i on mine. yet this meeting, no matter how brief, has echoed throughout the vastness of eternity, and it shall be carved permanently into my memories.

...

to her
the object of my silent desires
the yearning of my innermost being
of whom my dreams have set on the highest of thrones
and inhabited my thoughts and my senses
these words i write for you

the sound of a thousand pigs in the slaughter house

i may have one of the worst neighborhoods anyone could ever live in. every weekend, the whole place is filled with the sound of what i can only compare to that made by a thousand pigs being slaughtered. if you're a filipino, yes, i think you know what i mean. i bet your neighborhood has been infested too, at least once, by this scourge of humanity, this evil, evil device only the devil could have invented, the karaoke, and its more modern incarnation, the ktv.

if you think hearing gloria saying "hello garci" is enough to make you sick, wait till you hear my drunk, potbellied neighbors' version of a classic karaoke standard, frank sinatra's "my way". i feel only one word is able to describe their rendition more fully, disturbing. the vexation resulting from their infernal howling is enough to make me want to burn the whole neighborhood down. i think i'd rather be a refugee than be subjected to this inhumanity.

to give justice to the song, i bet even mr sinatra would rise from the grave to try to scare them back to their senses. i can almost hear him say, "the nerve! how dare they murder my song!"

man, the karaoke should be outlawed by the geneva convention. the karaoke can be considered as a weapon of mass destruction, you know. thus, it can be covered by the articles of war.

hey, mr. kofi annan, sir, are you listening? this is a matter of world peace. you should have taken this up in the last UN general assembly.

hey, mr george bush, sir, if you're still sending troops running around in the deserts of iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, you better come here to the philippines. there's a bunch of terrorists here in my neighborhood.

this karaoke thing has taken over the whole country in ways the abu sayyaf or the npa could never even dream of. today the philippines, tomorrow the world. i shudder at the thought.

but i have to admit, i too have once been on the dark side. and i enjoyed it. now ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before you condemn me to death by karaoke, allow me to plead my case. it was only once you know, during my company's last summer outing. our damned room didn't have any airconditioning, and there were a lot of mosquitoes, so i couldn't sleep. there was no more beer, the bar was already closed. so i had no choice but to spend the rest of the night singing myself hoarse till sun up. but at least everybody else was either too drunk or safely fast asleep to hear my wailing, so, no harm done right? at least i don't do it every bloody weekend for the whole damn neighborhood to hear. not guilty.

smells like martial law

president gloria is starting to really creep me out. first she had the policy of "calibrated preemptive response" against rallyists, which had the militants and leftists declaring it as a violation of human rights. then the plan to take over vital industries had businessmen running scared. now she has executive order no. 464, which is basically a challenge against congress, or the senate in particular, which is currently investigating the controversies involving malacanang like the wiretapping scandal, the venable deal, and northrail project. she may not call it martial law, but it sure smells like martial law to me.

ode to bobot candy

bobot, oh bobot
where art thou?
thy sugary sweetness
thy peanuty goodness
three pieces of heaven
wrapped in plastic
thou has sweetened
countless childhood days

manny pacquiao kicks ass!!!

paquiao wins! wooohooo!!! not just that, the 2 other pinoys in the bout also won! at last, some good news after months of getting nothing but crap from political scandals.

the day i heard about the fight, i had a bad feeling deep in my gut that he'd lose this one. a lot of people were saying that this fight would be an easy one for him. but guess what, people were saying the same thing about the pacquiao vs. morales bout, see how it ended.

good thing the bout didn't last long. i don't think pacquiao has a particularly stellar record with bouts that go the distance, considering his loss to morales and his draw against marquez.

unfortunately though, for pacquiao, morales lost to zahir raheem. that would make his coming rematch against morales sort of pointless. who would want to beat a loser? wait, if eric morales is a loser, and pacquiao lost to morales, then what does that make pacquiao? hehehe just joking...

on a sidenote, what on earth is manny doing starring in his own movie (co-starring the bold stars aubrey miles and juliana palermo and the very jurrasic looking eddie garcia)? does that mean that even a world famous boxer like him also has aspirations of becoming an artista? or is this just a sideline for him, some sort of plan b, in case something happens to his boxing career? everybody just wants to be a star, i guess. this reminds me of onyok velasco. remember him? whatever happened to onyok velasco anyway?

PowerPoint is Evil!!! and Other Matters

PowerPoint: Killer App?

Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

They have a point... and to think that we used that a lot in college...

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New entries in my photoblog!

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Meanwhile, an interesting piece of Filipino history from Ambeth Ocampo's column today on how the separation of church and state came about in the Malolos Congress:

“Antonio Luna also became a member of Congress. There he affiliated himself with the faction that we can call Radical. This faction was formed almost spontaneously when the celebrated debates started in Congress over the separation of Church and State, the expulsion of the friars and other religious congregations from the Philippines, and the prohibition by the Constitution of the formation of new religious orders.

“The debates showed signs of dragging on forever because, although it appears strange considering the motives which started the Revolution, one-half of the members of the Congress were adherents of the friars. Eloquent speeches from each group were pronounced, but there never was a voting because both groups were afraid of the result of the balloting. Luna broke the situation with one of those tricks peculiar to his character and which made him famous later.

“He assembled all those delegates of the Radical faction who had confidence in him, advising them to keep away from the sessions of the Congress but requesting them to remain within call at a moment’s notice. With the Radicals absent, the Conservatives constituted a majority during the sessions. Having made a careful count and thinking themselves sure of victory, the Conservatives asked for a vote while the few Radicals present registered a token opposition. The motion to call a vote was carried. Then, at the precise moment of balloting, Luna immediately called all his adherents to enter the session hall en masse, to the surprise of the confident Conservatives. The voting was taken and we won, if I remember right, by one or two votes. In this manner, a provision in our Constitution for the separation of Church and State was secured."