snippets of insight

"Some live their lives, merely out of a lack of reasons to die."

my greatest fear used to be to fail. now, it is to be dispassionate.

homesick

i've been feeling out of sorts. displaced.

i used to rant about my former work, how far it was from where we lived. sometimes, at the end of day, my mind is numbingly tired. that hour-long trip on my way home, i mostly stare unseeingly at the bright lights along edsa.

i "come to" when i see the skyscrapers on ayala, still buzzing with activity, never sleeping. i usually sit up straighter when the bus gets to the intersection of ayala and makati avenues and i think "i'm home".

those particular words haven't come to my mind in a while. settling back for me is never easy nor benign.

bad news/good news

just right this very minute, i found out that carlo, half of my fourteen-year-old twin godsons, was recently kidnapped by a moslem. he was snatched from his school in digos, davao del sur and was brought to general santos city.

his father, a davao city fireman, had relatives in gensan and fortunately had help recovering his son after a week in captivity. i don't have the details yet but i'm sure this was a very traumatizing experience.

carlo and paolo's (the other twin) mom used to take care of me when i was a little girl and she worked in my dad's office up until the family moved to digos. they are handsome and very bright boys who have so much potential. i'm grateful that nothing more untoward had happened.

on the other hand, WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO?!!

wishful thinking

in less than a month, i'll be 32. now how did that happen?!!!

i once thought that i'll be married at 24. not because i wanted to get married, i just assumed that that's what happens to people when they turn 24. i was 13 then, ano bang malay ko?

before i knew it, i was 24 and had already turned down two marriage proposals. the next seven years, i breezed through life...or as much "breezing" that can be done as i was beset by one tribulation after another. there was always a reason, another situation i had to troubleshoot, another responsibility i had to take on, another bad decision, that caused me to be commitment-shy.

the last guy i dated finally got fed up after i've been zipping in and out of town almost without warning. he couldn't understand my restlessness--i've lately been making noises about working abroad or just...leaving.

"why can't you stay put?"

this is the same refrain echoed in practically every relationship i've been in.

"you just haven't found the right guy yet."

people mean well and i appreciate their concern. i KNOW i haven't found him yet because i haven't been looking. i haven't the urge to settle down yet. the world's too large and too fascinating for me to stay put in one place and live the white-picket-fence dream with prince charming. not yet, not now.

why am i in a defensive mode? because even now i'm looking for an escape route. i've been home for exactly a month and i've been feeling the itch to move since i arrived. and i fear that i'll be hurting people again by leaving.

i'll be 32 soon. maybe when the clock strikes twelve, i'll gain the ability to put down roots.

or, at least find a shrink who will help me with my commitment issues :D

E.

generation gap.

when i was younger, i found it an amusing phrase meant to describe the cluelessness of my elders. now that i'm on the other side of the fence, i don't find it as amusing.

i'm not old (no, really! dili ko in denial! hehe). i'm thirty-one, in the prime of my life, contentedly single but not unattached. one of those "attachments" is my seventeen-year-old godson, the current heartache of my life, the one on the other side of this "gap".

the chubby, pink baby i once held in my arms has grown into a tattooed, mustached, tall, lanky, rebellious teenager who gave us the fright of our lives by ending up behind bars. five days of incarceration still was not enough to tame him. i do not know the person he is now. and i'm scared.

we were all sucker-punched by the events. i thought i was current with the times. i thought nothing much can surprise me anymore, that modern technology and a worldly society has pretty much anesthetized me. this seemingly sudden spurt of gangs and gang wars and teenage murders is horrifying.

generation gap. his parents, unsophisticated, humble working-class folks, are ill-equipped to handle this situation. my parents, though willing to help, are also inexperienced since we, their children, have never gone through this type of rebellion. i, the prodigal daughter and empathetic godmother, feel helpless.

i do not know what to do, how to protect him, how to help him overturn his life, how to shield him, how to pry off the barnacles of the bloods and the crips. i don't know. it's so painful that i am clueless.

jaime

it's a little harder each day to ignore him. slowly but surely, he has insinuated himself into my life. a few days ago, he called again to ask when for sure am i going back to manila. i gave him my schedule, looking forward to spending time with him after my training. now i may not be able to attend said training...the fee's just too steep. yet i'm still grasping at silly little reasons to leave for manila anyway.

more bai 8

the one and only bai 8 picture na kumpleto kami.
taken sometime '95 in negros oriental.

taken last january at the latest bai 8 reunion in ocean adventure, subic.
di kami kumpleto so walang away...asaran lang, hehe.

bai 8 presents...

we call ourselves "bai 8". pronounced "bayi", bisaya for "babae". 8 because, well, walo kami.

it started when the barkada of an ex, composed of nine dudes, put up their own store on campus as part of their marketing requirement and named it "laki 9". theirs made semantic sense at least while we...wala, mga copycats lang gyud, hehe.

but the name stuck. it was how our friends and admirers (ehem! haha!) knew us.

the friendship began in carson hall, way back in '93. it managed to survive high drama, individual neuroses, occasional mental derangement, boyfriend horrors, physical distance, and time. it is still a wonder to us why we've gravitated to one another, why we are still truly, madly, deeply bonded.

we all have dominant personalities. when we fought, we fought passionately. no one backs down. i suppose along the way, we all agreed to disagree. oddly, we've observed na nag-aaway lang kami ng todo 'pag kumpleto kaming walo; but if even just one is absent, peace is somehow kept.

wowie is a nurse in the US, chevas works in dubai, bing remains a silliman professor in dumaguete, ana is a wildlife advocate in subic, joko works as a nurse in zamboanga, rhina runs a business in dipolog, while tootsie, registered physical therapist, and i, interior design-slash-travel consultant, are finally together in davao.

thank God for technology, we are able to keep in touch no matter the location and timezone. sillimanians.com was our salvation, up until it shut down. bing said mura siya ug napi-angan because we suddenly had no access to bai 8 talks. we all felt that sense of loss and that is sincerely the truth.

as independent as we all are, our bond is as essential to us as breathing. we are who we are because of what we've been through and because we've been spiritually together for every "been-through", our self-identity will always be intertwined.

my pride and joys

clockwise:
izak (ice cream boy), patricia & paul (theater geeks), jakob (artist wannabe), jedrick & joshua (hammock folks)

adjusting here and convincing myself to stay hasn't been easy. but i constantly remind myself of the reasons why i wanted to come back.

as much as i enjoy my independent life in manila, i miss my family. we're a tight bunch and it hurts a little every time i come home to see my nieces and nephews gaining their own unique personalities without really witnessing them grow.

all in all, i have three nieces (patricia, jannel & jamie) and nine nephews (jedrick & joshua, paul, izak, jakob, lewis, iezer, edfil & edrick), courtesy of my cousins.

they're bright, funny, talented, smart-alecky, bossy, stubborn, aggravating, lovable, sweet, and simply irresistable!

auntie/tita gud ko, i have the license to gush!

blog. virgin, without stiiiir.

a fellow blogger once asked me if i ever tried AdSense. though he personally hasn't benefited from it yet, he heard daw of others na kumita na ng dolya-dolyares.

actually, matagal na ako may AdSense account. i think i had it since about three blogs ago pa. at that time, the number of bloggers were on the rise and with the amount of online time they're putting in, might as well pagkakitaan 'diba? ako naman, nakisawsaw din sa uso. okay lang at first, but after a while i forgot to monitor it. i can't even remember my login details anymore.

i was tinkering with my layout just now and i considered for a moment signing up again for AdSense. but nyeeaaaahh. i like my blog as it is. simple, commercial-free.

na naman!

an unknown number flashed on my cellphone screen. "ma'am, si rolly po 'to ng -----", the guy said when i answered, "kanina pa po kami dito sa labas ng unit n'yo kaso walang nagbubukas ng pinto. "

we've been renovating the place we're renting in makati and due to the number of repairs needed, as well as delays caused by bad weather, it's been taking a while to finish. since i had to leave for davao, i endorsed the supervising to the housemates.

now the carpenter's calling because none of them are picking up their phones or answering his knocks and time's a-wasting. so here i am in davao, trying to sort out the situation in makati. ate to the rescue.

i strongly suspect i will never outgrow this role.

reminiscing

the great thing about going to a place like silliman is you meet a lot of people from all walks of life and form friendships that last a lifetime.

that's how it went with charmaine, juna and i. we belonged to the class of 1996, school of communication...at least, juna and i tried to graduate by '96, fate had other plans, hehe. charm managed to avoid being swept away by our, ehem, bad influences and finished right on time.

we were an unlikely trio. juna was this tall, dusky, easygoing beauty who turned heads wherever she went, charm was this pretty, petite, hard-working news reporter for the university paper, while i was the pasaway transferee who spent more time riding on the back of a scooter than sitting in class. yet somehow, we found one another.

now, 11 years, 4 kids, 1 husband, and countless heartbreaks later, we're still stuck together and we still fondly call one another "dai".

juna is now married with a hubby who is so supportive and protective of our friendship (thanks so much, jun!). she's also a very hands-on mom to three handsome boys: shaquille, seth (my inaanak), and shadrach. charm is a great single mom to a cutie-pie, aka geoffrey daniel, aka bugoy, who also happens to be my inaanak. as for me, i am the happily footloose and fancy-free godmother they try to take advantage of as much as they can.

we rarely get together, me being the nomad that i am while they are very settled in dumaguete. fortunately, we have cellphones and our friendship has managed to subsist on texts and calls.

pero minsan, mas masarap pa rin ang chika pag kaharap sila. so i try to travel to dumaguete when my pocket permits. our last get-together was july last year. my schedule only allowed us one night, but what a night it was!

juna, charmaine & i @ hayahay! buhay pa rin kami!

with "our" hubby, jun2x! notice our rosy cheeks c/o numerous shots of rum coke :-D

today is actually charm's birthday (happy birthday, dai!) kaya i got a little maudlin. i know i'll be missing yet another celebration. haaay.

uuuuy!

tama bang kiligin ako na parang highschooler? madahan...at my age!

pero totoo. hahahahaha!

jaime called to ask when i'm planning to return to manila. i said next month. he said we should go out. i said...yes. all throughout the conversation, i had a big, crazy grin on my face.

however--yep, there's a big but!--if i am loony enough to pursue this, i'll be stepping on a lot of toes. ang tanong, am i prepared to hear a lot of ouches? samuka oi! reality bites.

pero kilig pa rin ako, hehehe.