twilight

“When you can live forever, what do you live for?” 

I’m not really a big fan of Twilight, but I definitely looove this line.

I also love the baseball scene in the movie by the way.

my topic walked to me

Here’s something I wrote 6 years ago for Sinag, the official college publication of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy in UP Diliman. It was part of my application for… hm, features editor I believe. But this essay made me a news editor instead. I wonder why.

 Well, I miss those days. I miss them.

 _____________

I was in despair in thinking what to write about “children” for my Sinag Editorship application. I’m close to picking up a common theme, when the topic suddenly came to me in dirt-black sando, greasy shorts, and in barefoot saying, “Kuya engeng piso.”
I thought of giving the poor boy a coin but I remembered what was in a billboard I saw somewhere, “Bawal ang Manghingi ng Limos at Magpalimos.” I looked at him for a second, pondered, and then turned my back from the innocent boy desperate for a single peso, convincing myself that it’s a lawful act I did.

As I walked away, I thought of how it is distressing that the law refuses to be kind, yet the government who should be acting on it can hardly do something. How many government officials have religiously thought of solving the problem? How many have dismissed it as merely an unfortunate and inevitable circumstance? Accounting for the numbers is useless, and accounting for it might surprise us that there are more who cares less than the number of street children who knew that they are one of the country’s leading headaches.

The children of the streets don’t get any younger. And unless many take the initiative to solve the problem, they will just grow old by age. They’re not mere perpetrators of our economic downfalls; they are also victims of our negligence. We take part in the cause, simply by looking at them as economic concerns, and not as social beings.

I initially planned for an inspirational essay on children, but what I got to write is rather about a real-life scene that I myself am an actor. A topic on children seemed pleasurable, but what I found was about children who need to be inspired- and educated.

If we fail as a nation to resolve, or even just address the problem with sincerity, all of us can be called unfortunate children ourselves simply by being a failure to the education that made us adults. We then become the children that the streets cannot accommodate

_____________

Written some time in 2002

evolution

I finally decided to let go of some of my writings (poems, essays, papers etc), written when I was a lot youger, and publish it here in my blog. Here’s the first one. This one is not on my favorites list though.

_____________

 …Coincidence
Encounter
Illusion
Sex
Conception
Engagement
Marriage
Birth
Parenthood
Care
Love
Home

And some things
     Change,
     Evolve,
     Never last…

Drugs
Hallucination
Greed
Tension
Dominance
Force
Death
Apathy
Disillusionment
Neglect
Separation
House

…

 _____________

 Written sometime in 2002. 

how does a chicken pee?

When I was in 2nd year High School, I remember having a conversation with one of my classmates about how a chicken pee. We don’t recall ever seeing a chicken sits down or raises one leg to get rid of bodily fluids, so we tried to open a number of encyclopedias and biology books at the school library down the hall to satisfy this sudden curiosity. The last 15-minute ‘recess’ of the day was spent browsing through pages; no answer was found. On our way back, we argued about possibilities and speculations. Even without a concrete answer, it was the most productive 2-minute walk back to room 211 of Notre Dame of Greater Manila. We got the answer from our biology teacher. Years later, my chicken pee discussion buddy became one of my best friends, in the literal sense.

That chicken pee question became some sort of an indication for me of a person’s imagination and conversationability (for the lack of a better term that i can think of at the moment). I usually ask new ‘close friends’ in high school and college about this, and somehow I didn’t get to be closer to those who simply just don’t want to talk about it. I always thought that it was some starting point of more fruitful, imaginative, intellectual or funny conversations. Well, maybe some people don’t think of it that way. Waste of time? To some, maybe. But definitely not mine.

I used the question even on dates, friendly or romantic. It turned out that those who can talk and laugh about it with me brings more life and magic to the table. I am actually currently spending more than a year of commitment with a woman who can make the conversation both intellectual and outrageously funny, be it about ideas, events, people, or chicken.

I enjoy conversations, even debates. And it seemed like I have a short connection lifespan with people I don’t get to talk about chicken and peeing combined. It’s not intentional by the way; its just it seemed to be like that. If only I’m a psychology major, I would have used it for my thesis.

Well then, how does a chicken pee? Think about it, and then maybe let’s talk.

2013 / 2017

“I am an unofficial green card holder without my consent. We all are, on different terms.”

I was actually supposed to write an entry about the US Presidential Elections about a month ago, when I saw John McCain and Barack Obama battle it out in one of the debates televised worldwide. It made me wonder how come the Philippines never had any of those presidential debates. It could have at least given us a more enlightening outlook to how the candidates think, better than how the media portrayed them. But then again that’s another story.I was virtually there when Obama won the US Presidency in the election held two weeks ago. I was following the news in CNN and in the Internet. I silently wished for an Obaman America as the voting day closed in. I slept with the TV open on election day, wishing that when I open my eyes the first black US president is waving at the world, including me. True enough.I’ve never been an avid fan of US electoral system before, although I actually chose to study a couple of courses on American democracy and political philosophy. I guess on the next four or eight years, I will be one of those who will follow the turn of events in US domestic and foreign policy. Suddenly I became a political animal again, in the macro sense; a cynical spectator who fears for what lies ahead.

I wonder what will happen to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or how NoKor and the old Persia will be viewed by the US under Obama. How about healthcare, and taxes, and Wall Street. How about globalization, counter-terrorism and world peace. How about the US government meddling with Philippine governance and economy. How about business process outsourcing. How about my job.

Perhaps that is the reason why all of a sudden I get too concerned about what Obama will bring into the table. With almost all my relatives living in their turf and with my job catching a flu when their economy sneezes, I will be affected by their policies. I am an unofficial green card holder without my consent. We all are, on different terms.

Talk about globalization. Talk about a ‘world without strangers’, and talk about that being strange.

fish dilemma

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

I saw that dilemma today, wherein someone’s capacity to offer kindness is actually challenged. Sam and I were waiting for our food in ‘Pares’ along Dimasalang (near Dangwa) when a woman suddenly sat beside me and pleaded the waiters for a cup of their house soup. With just a few exchanges of looks from the manager and the waiters, everyone will be able to get the message: the woman is someone you can say a high-risk customer. She’ll sit there and won’t order anything except for the free soup. Give her the cup of soup she wanted and the next days she might just go back for more. Allow her to wander around and the place may just lose some paying customers. The possibilities are endless.

But then again how can you not help a woman with just a cup of soup? A glass of water? A place to stay? A corner to sleep on? Money to go home? Food for tomorrow? Food for her friends? Food for a lifetime?
When is a help helpful, and when is it not helping anymore?

Business. Profits. Kindness. Generosity. Dependence. Freeloading. Sometimes some things just don’t or won’t fit comfortably together.

How do you help the needy when they don’t have food for a day. Many would just give them ‘a fish’ and then leave. A handful (and you’re quite lucky if you can gather a handful) would ‘teach them how to fish’ perhaps by leading them to a public shelter where they can stay and be fed. That, my friends, is superbly admirable; but I can’t really blame the others who will just hand over the fish and walk away.

There are exceptional times that I myself am tempted to take a kid or two from the streets and treat them to lunch. I’ve planned for that a thousand times, but up to now I still can’t seem to get it done. Most of the time, when we give people a ‘fish for a day’, we actually encourage them to continue to fish like that everyday, coz most of the time you’ll never know when you are giving a man a fish, teaching him how to fish, or both - for bad or good.

…and that dilemma happens everyday with virtually just about anything and with anyone: your sister, your boss, an officemate, your roommate, the person next to you on a bus, and the list goes on.

So what happened to that woman? She got her soup, and a glass of cola too. The manager personally attended to her. She even ordered Beef Mami probably 10 mins later, and went on talking to no one in particular. She talked about a police complaint, a lesbian she knew, and even instructed no one in particular to charge her orders to no one in particular. She also asked for our Lechon Kawali before we left.

We never found out if her imaginary friends paid for her noodles or not.