April 21Manila Oceanarium

Here's more Auntie Melds, haha! wish you were with us =_) we miss you lots **hugs**


There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.- Steven Wright

cousins and nephews

another boy in the family

my third nephew. still no nieces. my cousins who are spouting these cute little hellions (see those kicking little feet, it may belong to a baby but the kick felt like it came from a baby horse!) are intent on building an all male basketball team.

oh this baby's nick is SanMig (yes, from the name of both the archangel and a beer...)



People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. - Leo J. Burke

Early Halloween Treat at Biggs

check out Auntie Leni's expression - precious =_)

Tugotan Mo Akong Magmundo

'Habo mong haloy na bilar, lubong tulos,
kun pwede suluon.' Huring tugon mo.

Alagad, itao mo sako an pribiliheyo
na magsul'ot nin itum, diretso ko ini.

Ako an binayaan.

Tugutan mo akong magmundo
minsan garo pig-gagantsilyo ang sakuyang puso.


--from Kristian Sendon Cordero's compilation Pusuanon


translation hangover. i was translating bikol poem that jade got from a friend. took me 2 days to translate most of it. i did ask my friends and family to help but some of them gave up on some of the words. i was shocked too i know. the excuse - - it's not naga-bikol. well it was mine too! i don't speak all the bicol dialects.

there were 2 words that eluded me. it's so embarassing that i don't even know what some of the words are and to think Bikolana ako! then today i found out that the poem already has a tagalog translation online from the writer's site. **groans*** i should've gone online yesterday and saved myself the humiliation and all the trouble...

the poem i posted here is written by my cousin's prof in AdNU. He has a published compilation - Pusuanon. since i am wallowing in misery these days, the poem is flavor of the month for me. it reminded me of my mom's wake.

Below is the Tagalog translation i made. i had an easier time doing this than the one i made for jade since most of the words in the original are also used in Tagalog. i'm giving a disclaimer that i may not have translated some of the words right or captured the essence. if it isn't as good as the original, well, come up with your own.


'Ayaw mong paglamayan, libing agad,
kung pwede sunugin.' Huling habilin mo.

Pero, ibigay mo sa akin ang pribiliheyo
na magsuot ng itim, karapatan ko ito.

Ako ang iniwan.

Pabayaan mo akong magluksa
minsan parang ginagantsilyo ang aking puso.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe. - Sartre

it must be one of those rare days because i found eva online. she's one of those people i'm lucky to meet in this lifetime considering the distance and the language barrier. her lingua franca is german while mine is filipino. on the side she knows some french and very good in english while i speak a little mandarin and also good english (me thinks, anyway). i 'met' her when i was i don't know maybe on my 5th or 6th grade. these days we keep in touch through email and chat. but she's on msn/hotmail and i'm on ym. isn't it great that you can combine your ym and hotmail accounts? very cool... =)

i can't remember exactly when she and i became friends but i know it started with IYS (international youth service). i'm not even sure if IYS still exists but it gives you a penfriend for the cost of a dollar. but that was a looooonnggg time ago (when the exchange rate was $1 = Php 27 or 30 something). so if they still exists, it might cost more than it did 10 or so years ago. anyway her brother was suppose to be my friend but she said her brother's not really much of a writer so i ended up with her. i still have the old letters back when we haven't really discovered the wonders of the world wide web. but i sure miss getting the letters. i mean you can't beat snail mail, even if it's slow. it's got character that emails will never have. there's so much you can glean by just looking at the stationary or the handwriting (even the erasures) and the pictures we sent each other. it was fun. i mean it's hard to put into words the feeling i get when finding an envelope with my name on it and seeing the stamps. i'm getting nostalgic.

the letters became sporadic. or maybe we just grew up and got preoccupied with the usual things - school, work, life, and love (or lack of it). so whenever we see each other online we trade stories about school (my plan to go back but she's going back to school next week), work (or lack of it, since we're both unemployed at the moment), life (oh yeah... lots of it), and love (definitely drew blanks on this one, some strings on the side but not exactly the real thing as eva said so it doesn't count).

it's strange how our lives sort of mirror each other. we're both out of work (by choice). we're now back where we came from - home. i'm in naga and she's in neustadtl since it's closer to her new school. we're both drifting (somewhat, but at least you know what you want to be eves). trying to figure out where we are in our lives and where we want to be, which is not easy (the figuring out thing). we're at the point in our lives where we evaluate the relationships we've had or lack of it. what stops us from having one and what keeps us from moving out of "unhealthy" ones.

i told her that i will prolly be a spinster. i will be THE eccentric tita (aunt) or ninang (godmother). good friend that she is of course she said it's not true!

but my mother's death was a culmination of sorts. i questioned a lot of things. the 2 F's - fate and faith. so f*u*c*k both of them. her death made me realize that i'm not capable of trusting others or more importantly subjecting myself to the vulnerability brought about by loving too much. there are dimensions, depth and degrees to love. losing my mother gave me more than a glimpse of what i could lose and even that was too much. so i decided i'm not going to live on to my 30's if i had to endure another loss. just thinking of my dog dying is too much. i now have a 'deeper' understanding of the parokya ni edgar song "buloy."

i can write all the synonyms of how it feels to have your heart ripped out of your chest (it's a cliche but i never loved cliches more until i finally had a chance to appreciate this one first hand). it's crippling, paralyzing, stunting, mind-numbing... blah... blah.. blah...blah... although the love i have for my mom may be different from romantic love since the latter is more of a choice. i've always felt that love is a choice. so if you get hurt in the process, it's a consequence of that choice. i've seen some really good friends with really good heads fail miserably when it comes to this thing. it's not something they teach you how to navigate in school. or if they do, they give you the theories but you won't know how to go about it til you're there. you either go with your heart or your head. my emotional iq must be lower than the average, tsk, tsk... i don't want to get hurt again, so it's a no brainer. nip it in the bud, yeah, cold hearted biatch.

i'm not particularly good in math. god i hated math. but i can appreciate ratio and proportion this way: when it comes to falling in love, some people say that your head/brain is inversely proportional to your heart. the more you use your head, hello loneliness for you cold hearted fiend. the more you use your heart, the more stupid you become. so you have to find an acceptable proportion where love and money intersects with acceptable opportunity cost for both the heart and the head. good luck with the math.

i don't believe in love at first sight either, or the you-had- me-at-hello-kind of thing from jerry macguire. lust at first sight, yes. they said that if you're unlucky in love, you're suppose to be lucky when it comes to money. i must be an exception to that rule. crap. maybe you're one of those lucky fools, good for you.

don't trust them not to cheat on me or not to die on me; which is preposterous since humanity is fallible to these things. unless i want to commit myself to a penguin, my heart and my sanity just might be safe... but i am not a penguin. i can't imagine being in a long distance relationship either. awww shucks, serious trust issues... and abandonment issues.... hmmmmmmmmmmmm

for some reason our conversation drifted to kids. i suddenly found myself a godmother (**shudder** shudder**) to 2 boys. my cousins are spouting boys. i wish one of them would beget a girl. really, i want to dress them up like barbie dolls. you know, in pink and purple clothes. you can't do that to boys unless you want to incur the wrath of their fathers.

a few sundays ago, i found myself at a birthday party of one of my college friends. his wife is 6 months preggy. they're having a boy, to the delight of my friend. cheers! (no purple and pink gifts unless i want the friendship to be over... hmm lemme get back to you on that arvs lol). seriously,i'm going to be a ninang again when that boy comes out... ohhhh dear. i remember a conversation i overheard from some of my high school classmates when we met at Wok's that mom's expecting boys look chaka (gay linggo for "ugly"). so love and i agreed that arvs wife, kati, must be an exception.

anyway if i were to get myself pregnant (omg knock on wood), i think i'm going to look like an overstuffed peking duck and carrying 9 months of excess weight is beyond me at the moment. when god was giving out the genes for slender bodies, i was busy. busy snoring at lala land. giving birth sure looks like it hurts a lot. i know i'm a bit of a sado-masochist at times but we'll leave pregnancy to the experts. besides, it's not like the world is lacking babies!

a few hours ago i met with my friend, love, who just arrived from a seminar in Subic. she brought me chocolates (vanhouten with almonds yummm... no melamine i hope). we realized that it seemed kind of strange that it's the males from our batch (our college block) who are getting hitched before the females. but then we realized there were only 3 of us girls in that block. the economics society is sadly facing extinction in AdNU. i'm not sure what measures the University has done so far as to attract future econ majors. there is a stock market crisis faced by the US (and just about every economy in the world) so for sure there's no lack of topics to discuss in the classroom. which reminds me that i must be in trouble since if there's a recession, my chances of finding my dream job will be slim. ouch...

but it's not like i'm the only one. welcome to the unemployed statistics puds =) it's not so bad when you're not alone, is it?



The reverse side also has a reverse side. - Japanese proverb

The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders. - Foster's Law

there is an ungrateful and self-centered part of me that can't forgive mama for dying. not that mama had any choice in the matter (of dying) but it's there. i felt like i've been robbed.

but mostly there's guilt... and anger. a lot of it directed at myself. i've always wanted to resign, i felt like mama died just so i could do it. it seems that her death gave birth to this other side of me. or maybe it's always been there.

i feel like i am two persons fighting for existence for this one body. i've always been a responsible daughter. didn't really get into much trouble. but after she died, i felt this compulsion to be reckless, unreasonable, irresponsible, and dangerous. an immense propensity to self-destruct. all the self-directed anger and this guilt weighing heavily on my shoulders had to have some sort of outlet. i wanted others in my family to hurt the way i am hurting; and if those other than my family gets affected, it's collateral damage.

obviously i did not inherit mama's gentler nature. of the 3 of us, it's my brother who inherited it while my sister and i turned out be bitches. shobe is more practical. she deals with emotions the same way she spends her money. once it's spent, it's gone. but i seem to have a well of it. it's always half full so when the storm comes, i rage.

one of my friends asked me once which would be a lot easier, "losing you mother because she died or losing her because she left you and you do not know why?" it hurts either way but losing her for the second reason will most probably scar me the most. if only because she had the choice to stay but she didn't.

people tell me it gets easier with time. but it doesn't. but i tell them what they wanted to hear anyway. the pain never really lessened, more like you find other ways to numb yourself to it. ways to never be that susceptible to that kind of hurt again. you learn to build forts.

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane. - Philip K. Dick