new beginnings

This will most likely be my last post for this year.

Every new year, I picture myself literally holding on to the December page of the calendar, trying to grasp whatever memories–good or bad–that the incumbent year has given me. But of course, I've no other choice but to let go. What with all the happy and crackling sounds around me, I'd probably be too distracted to even hold on to the page.

2006 is the year I would like to hold on to for long. This was the last year we spent with Nanay. I still miss her a lot. A LOT. But I know, as cliche as it is, that time heals. And time won't be able to perform its healing miracles if I continue to stop it from ticking.

Still, the next year promises so many new things for everyone. I just hope and pray that those new things would be mostly good, if not better. I say "mostly" because I would not want to wish everyone a perfect year, much as I want to. That's just not reality. Plus, if everything's perfect, appreciating better times won't be the same.

Yesterday, I got a new planner (I'm obsessed with getting/buying one every time the year ends). I feel like I have another set of pages on which I can tangibly record my hopes and my I-plan-to's. And when I did jot them down yesterday, I realized I haven't been as driven as I was supposed to be this year. I still wrote down a couple of plans that were supposed to be realized this year, but sadly, they remained as plans. I just wish that starting January, I'd be ticking off those plans I've written, one by one. Big and small. Probable or seemingly improbable. So yes, next year is another big opportunity to start things over, but I hope to have a better game plan. (I trust Him to lead me to a better game plan.)

Indeed, the coming year is something to look forward to. And this passing year, together with everything it brought, is something to keep as a precious memory.

Have a blessed and renewed new year, every one!

still feeling fuzzy

I've always loved the Christmas season. Everything just seems cheerful and warm and stress-free. Makes me feel real fuzzy all over.

Christmas Eve was spent with the pups (that's why I'm still not free from hives–I really think I'm allergic to something in them! Poor me!) and a visit from a handful of our church (Emmanuel Baptist Church) friends. I'm glad they loved my mom's carbonara–well, my mom makes the best! While having pasta, we all slumped down and watched Gothika. Unfortunately, the brady bunch had to get going back to church (or to another house to raid), so we weren't able to finish watching it. (Well actually, sis and I already watched it. We just liked to scare ourselves all over again.) Just lent it to Peewee so he and his bros can continue the Christmas Eve fright. (I love it when people from EBC drop by our place this time of every year. Teehee!)

Christmas is for kids!

It has been a wonderful Christmas Eve. Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy. Hope everyone had a dandy and blessed time, too!

have a blessed holiday season, everyone!

It's just 3 days before Christmas and everyone's still out in the streets (and in the malls) doing their last-minute Christmas shopping (me included). Traffic's heavy and lines are so long. And I'm still here in the office trying to make up for lacking hours (lest I get shocked again with my salary deduction). I'm just feasting on chocolate mousse cake with lots of squishy marshmallows to console myself (more than half of the guys here at our department already went home early). Meanwhile, Francis is presently trying to enjoy himself at their company Christmas party. I'd be seeing him tomorrow because he promised to give me my present, so I look forward to that.

I wonder how it is to spend Christmas in Baguio. It must be fantastically and mesmerizingly cool!

The other day, a friend asked me why I'm so perky (well, I usually am. Perhaps I'm just living up to my name). And why not? It's the holidays–it's Christmas time, my favorite time of the year. Though come to think of it...this is the first holiday season that my family would be spending without Nanay. That's something to dampen my spirit. Still, I know she's very happy up there, enjoying her own Christmas celebration with the Lord Himself! (What a Christmas!)

So there. Got not much else to say save for: MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A BLESSED NEW YEAR, EVERYONE! MUAH! *huggles, huggles*

"dying is an art"

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
-Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Last night gave me the chance to catch up on being a couch potato (it's so happy to go home early!), so I was able to watch Sylvia. Such a sad, sad story of a great female poet, Sylvia Plath. And somehow, I came to wonder why such gifted people end up committing suicide (in artistic ways, mind you). Such depression, such angst. But I do empathize with the poet–she was so in love with her husband Ted Hughes, only to end up in agony over his affair with another poet's wife, Assia Wevill (who also happened to be an aspiring poet herself). Add the fact that Sylvia suffered from bouts of severe depression after her father's demise. She first attempted to end her life by crawling into a cellar after taking a handful of sleeping (?) pills. But it seems as though Death did not want her yet. She was found by her mother and was given a second lease on life. However, Ted Hughes' affair was the last straw. Before gassing herself to death in her own kitchen, she made sure her two children (from Ted) were safe in their room. She prepared for them milk and bread and opened their bedroom windows for ventilation, after which she sealed their bedroom door with towels so the gas won't harm her children. The movie depicted her suicide act metaphorically, and this I appreciate very much (the depiction, not the suicide).

Like I said , watching the film (and reading other writers' biographies) makes me wonder if artists really bring upon themselves such catastrophic ending. (Anne Sextion, Plath's contemporary and friend, also committed suicide by shutting herself in her garage, consequently dying of carbon monoxide poisoning; Antoine de Saint-Exupery allegedly committed suicide by crashing his plane while on a reconnaissance flight; then there's Vincent Van Gogh, who shot himself in the chest with a revolver.) Did such creative genius push these artists to their own death? What could be happening inside their confused minds? And to think Plath and Sexton seemed so normal and happy before they suddenly ended their lives! It's just kind of depressing to learn that these people chose to end everything they have (though I'm sure they think they have none left for them), leaving posthumous awards and citations.

It's just so...sad...

(Image from www.culturapara.art.br/opoema/sylviaplath/images)

randomness is pretty

Due to lack of sensible things to do while waiting for the holiday break, let me share my thoughts...

1. I want to go home.
2. I'm still not done shopping for Christmas.
3. Buses stopping here in Galleria won't budge because the drivers bribe MMDA people with P10. How cheap! How baffling!
4. The call of an editorial job is haunting me. Every single day now.
5. I feel sooooo lazy ever since I got back from Baguio.
6. Christmas is a wonderful season to go broke, because you know you're able to share what you have.
7. A new haircut seems appealing. I'm seeing Charlize Theron's do in Aeon Flux. Hmmm...
8. It's forever exciting to give gifts to people you cherish dearly. Do hope mom, sis and Francis like what I got for them.
9. SM has it all for you. Period.
10. Sometimes, it's a pain in the pocket to work inside a mall. It calls for extreme self-restraint.
11. Two years seem so long for us to get married. But I can wait.
12. Lumpiang ubod is the best!
13. Wish I could meet my online friends.
14. I miss our puppies. We love them so much.
15. I need to really, REALLY start waking up early and moving fast and remember to NOT hit the snooze button so I can come to work as early as 9 or 9:30am.
16. Why are comfort room cubicles always full when you're in a hurry?
17. I'm bored. And happy.
18. Traveling is, I think, what I'd want to do for a very long time. I just need the resources.
19. Egypt is tantalizingly mystical.
20. Is the rafflesia edible?
21. Will this country ever make it?
22. Baguio is heaven on earth.
23. How free it is to see one's life in poetry.
24. Poetry is the song of the soul.
25. I'm afraid I can never be a full-fledged poet. Or maybe....

my sister won the lotto!

No, she didn't. But she's now a full-fledged engineer! And she even made it to the Top 20! Wahooo! Can't wait for her first-pay treat! Hahaha!

Congratulations, Erma! That's another of God's blessings for you!

Mom, Francis, RJ (sis' beau) and I went with her last Sunday to Manila Hotel to witness the oathtaking of this country's newest Chemical Engineers (or as the ticket put it, "Checmical Engineers". Man, a ticket costs 800 bucks and it has a typo? Duh.). We we're so afraid that we might not make it to Manila Hotel by 1pm, as there was an expected prayer rally near the vicinity. Thank God the traffic was still normal, we were able to make it on time.

The food served was good. Sulit ang 800! Though our table had to finish two cups of coffee before the creamer we requested arrived.

And being the aspiring photographer sister that I am, of course I took charge of documenting the event in pixels. Here are some of the photos. (Please don't expect them to be artsy.)

The oathtakers reciting "Panatang Makabayan". Nah, they're really saying "I am now an engineer so please
give me a job or else my parents would throw me out." And that's my sis with a rose in hand.

The UP Diliman "Checmical" Engineers! UP Diliman made it as this year's best performing school–
51 out of 51 board takers passed! UP FIIIIGHT!

Tres marias

RJ, sis, mom, moi and Isko

I miss you, grampa!

it's a sad, sad truth...

I felt relieved to have learned that Daniel Smith has finally been convicted of the rape of Nicole. But I felt nauseated to also have learned that there still are people out there who live up to patriarchal idealisms/perspective.

Months before the Subic rape case was resolved, I heard this man comment on radio (while I'm aboard an FX on my way to work) that it's the girl's fault that she was raped, and that women like her, who party until dawn under the influence of booze, doesn't really deserve sympathy. That women like her (assuming she's a prostitute) really deserve to be abandoned after being used, just like a tissue paper. The pig! I just felt vindicated when the radio commentators answered that pig back, saying that if he thinks women are like a sheet of tissue paper, then he must be the toilet bowl. Hurrah!

And then the other day, someone I know commented that he doesn't believe Nicole to be telling the truth; that if the girl doesn't want anything to happen, then nothing would; and how can someone as good-looking as Daniel Smith rape someone like Nicole? Besides, "no one gets raped nowadays." I felt aghast! How can someone like that person say something like that? I had to control myself the moment I heard those words. So does that mean that if you're not good-looking, you just have to shut up and sulk in a corner after being raped by a handsome guy?

The thing here is, it's more than being "rape-worthy" (I apologize for the term). No one, NO ONE, should ever be rape-worthy, regardless of whether she looks like Angelina Jolie or Bakekang. And it doesn't also follow that only ugly men are rapists. You must be living under a rock on some forsaken island to believe that.

Plus, as truth would have it, men are physically stronger than women, so when the assailant punches the victim (or does anything that would physically hurt her), could the girl do anything else aside from passing out?

And WOMEN and CHILDREN STILL DO GET RAPED. Statistics even show that there are so many unreported cases of sexual assault these days. Even wives get raped by their husbands, hence the term "marital rape".

Also, let's not miss another important point here: No matter if a woman is earning her living by selling her body, NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO RAPE HER. (Just to reiterate, "rape" means forcing someone to engage in sex. That means that even if you're a prostitute, and a customer forces himself on you WITHOUT your permission, THAT IS RAPE.)

Though I do understand the reason why some women are forced into prostitution, I do not vouch for it. Women are NOT sex slaves. But given the status quo, we still can't go on blaming those in this business when they get raped; it's not as if they feel so grateful for what they've been forced to do.

Forgive me for venting like this. It's just that such narrow-minded thinking irks me. Maybe it's partly my fault, thinking that at this day and age, people would be more clever–more intelligent and humane–to be gender-biased.

this is overdue

(This post is overdue by a week. Anyway, it's better late than never, right?)

So Francis did surprise me on our 8th Anniversary. The day before until the day itself, I was clueless as to where we're celebrating our big day. Though I did had this hunch that we're heading to Subic. And we did! It was fun, fun, fun! We had lunch at Gerry's Grill in Waterfront Drive...

I endured the heat for this shot!

After that...nah, let the photos speak...Teehee!

On our way to Zoobic, we chanced upon these families
of monkeys crossing the road.

Meet Nicole, the bear.

Allo!

Another ostrich shot of me

Si Puti!

Le tigre at the Tiger Safari (still in Zoobic)

They're such hungry crocs!

More photos here!

P.S.
Thanks a zillion, Pangga! You're da man! Heeheehee!

for Pete's sake

This is terrible news, indeed.

If Peter Jackson won't be directing The Hobbit, or any LOTR projects for that matter, then might as well dump any idea of putting this on the big screen. I can't imagine another director doing justice to Tolkien's work. It's inconceivable!

For my co-LOTR fans out there, please sign the petition here.