19 posts tagged “ponder wonder”

Emerging market. That's what our country is according to some private, multinational companies. To bluntly put it, we can also attach third world, poor and underdeveloped as its adjective. Or if that's too harsh, try "developing" country.
There's just so much about this country that's making me feel frustrated. I don't watch TV or read the daily newspaper because I thought I would be spared of seeing reality. But by just merely looking around, I can see and feel the poverty, and as Nonette would put it, the "disparity between the rich and the poor."

1. Tax vs. savings. My monthly tax deductions are bigger than my monthly savings. But these taxes are like dead investments, with a portion of it going to the country and another portion divided among greedy government officials. Oh come on, let's not deny it. government officials can afford to buy luxury houses and cars from the generosity of our hard-working tax payers.
2. Filth in the air. I don't smoke, but I'm afraid that I'd still die of lung cancer due to air pollution (knock on wood). What happened to our Clean Air Act?
3. Drug regulations. I was recently prescribed a drug with phenypropanolamine, the banned component in decongestants in the U.S. When I found out that taking the drug would increase my risk of stroke, I returned to the drug store to ask for an alternative drug.
"Lahat naman po ng decongestant merong phenylpropanolamine, eh," the pharmacist assistant told me.
I fumed. When I got home, I checked BFAD online. BFAD had a press release about this drug component about two years ago. But no update since then. I emailed BFAD, the office of the DOH secretary and the general email of the DOH to ask if there's a decongestant with no phenylpropanolamine available in the Philippines.
I don't know where my email landed, but I didn't get any feedback. Any private firm could've answered back in 48 hours. But it's been more than month, and still no feedback.
4. Filth in the streets. Talk about dirt, pollution, people selling recently stolen watches, and millions of pesos worth of SUV with a single-digit plate number  8, overtaking everyone in the high-way with its siren ringing as if there's an emergency or someone dying inside them on a Sunday.
I remember my uncle and aunt rushing to the hospital with flashers on and with the car window open for people to see that there was an emergency--my aunt was about to give birth. I wonder why a congressman was in such a hurry on a Sunday or why they're keeping their emergency a secret behind the heavily tinted cars. And I wonder why a red-plate car was occupying a mall parking lot on a Sunday.
5. Foreign debt. I don't even want to know how much I owe the world.

But despite all the frustrations this country is giving its citizens, I love this country and I still consider it my only home in this planet. After all, I was born here. And I grew up here. I may make any other city in the world my new home, but I'm sure I'll long to go back to this country. Perhaps that's just how foolish patriotism can be.

Hello and goodbye is pretty much like yin and yang--a pair of complementary opposites. We say hello; we bid goodbye.

Since Wednesday, I've been dragging myself out of the office and forcing myself to go home to a nearly empty room. Trina has left, while Nona is on a two-week vacation. I've never complained about being alone, but these girls have been my roomies for almost a year now. So I find it quite lonely staying there alone. The thought that they're not out for just a night or a weekend made me feel lonely. And with the room swiped clean of Trina's stuff and Nona's bed without her PC, the room looks bare and stripped of its homey environment.

As if God has been watching me carefully everyday, He sprinkled a few hello's to my Thursday and Friday. I was on my way to Chimara yesterday when I thought I saw a familiar face passed by. I thought I was mistaken, but he also turned to take a second look. It was Ralph, one of my friends from high school. As much as we wanted to have some chat after three years of not seeing each other and six years of not really having the chance to talk, we only had a few minutes to say our hello's, how are you's, and brief updates of where we work.

Friday came. I was busy at work, but Jappy texted me to say that he's there in the building. I haven't seen him for quite some time since he's now Laguna-based. So despite the busy schedule and a full stomach, I decided to take a lunch break to meet up with him. Over salad (naks, how healthy!), we talked about what has been happening with our lives. Another goodbye and see-you-soon said, and I was back to the office in about less than an hour.

I logged out of the office later than my usual log-out time. But as always, my office mates and I walked our way to the terminal, where I waited for what seemed like a lifetime before a bus arrived. Then came Ralph. Again! And he was about to tag in to get into the bus ahead of us. I called out his name and so, he didn't appear to be someone tagging in. Hehe. This time, we were given about an hour to have some chit-chat as we traveled to Laguna. We shared our mobile numbers before I dropped off at the mall, where my father fetches me every Friday.

Outside the mall, I saw Tin, one of my college friends. She was also waiting for her father. Before our fathers arrived (geez, it sounded like kindergartens waiting for their fathers), we got the chance to update our phone books with our mobile numbers and a quick update of our lives.

I knew it--there's an omniscient Someone out there who knows the ill effect of a sudden goodbye to me. He gave me a few hello's to old friends--Jappy, Ralph and Tin. It served as a gentle reminder that someday, I'll say hello's to people I bade goodbye to. These hello's that I said recently served as my 500mg dose of uppers.

And oh, the chocolates and tofu chips helped too. :-)

Bridge to Terabithia tops my current list of favorite movies. It's the only movie that I watched twice at the cinema. Craving for sour cream pop corn, I thought the pop-corn experience would be better with a good movie. So I picked a movie that I thought would be safe to watch alone--the GP--where the audience is composed of children, a family, or perhaps someone like me who had nothing better to do (except something diabolical). I watched, laughed and cried.

Less than a week later, a friend and I bumped into each other. I shared with her that I liked this new movie, and she said that she'd love to watch it. I gladly volunteered to watch with her, hence my second chance to watch it. The law of diminishing returns certainly doesn't apply to my appreciation of this movie.

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I noticed that most of the movies I appreciate are for children. I don't know what's with my childhood that makes me feel so attached to everything for children. I had my share of fun back then, but heck, maybe I just miss the simplicity of a kid's life.

The world can be cruel for the grown ups, and as logical creatures, adults can easily magnify the adversities of life. But for kids, imagination is their simple key to unlocking happiness, spreading the infection of laughter, and gaining rapport, trust and friendship. Bridge to Terabithia is about this key and what it holds for anyone who holds on to it.

It's amazing that artists (e.g. Katherine Paterson, C.S. Lewis) can write books involving children, yet targeting at adults to read beyond the lines, and learn great lessons from childhood and seemingly senseless juvenile thoughts.

My personalized Google homepage informed me this trend.

Frogs, along with their amphibian friends, are disappearing. I think these creatures look slimy and disgusting, but I don’t hate them. I don’t want them to disappear. In the eyes of wildlife biologists, these are beautiful creatures. Its my limited understanding of amphibians that limit me from fully appreciating them and looking at them beyond their unattractive skin and cold body temperature. I understand, however, that they play a role in ecology’s balance.

I feel guilty because I probably played a role in their population decline. I was a toad assassin. Every BIO2 student used to be one. But I was worse. I was a torturer, because I wasn’t very skillful with pithing them.

When I was a freshman, I was enrolled in a General Biology II (BIO2) class. Almost every week of that semester, we all had toads and cockroaches to kill. I was lucky because we were paired and allowed to use gloves, and my partner would often handle the toad. The batches before us used to do it individually and they were not allowed to use gloves unless they have an open wound in their hands.

Sometimes, my partner would pass me the toad. So I still get my share of handling the amphibian. And I wasn’t spared at our last exam: every student had a toad to pith, dissect and leg skin to peel off, each with 20 pins to put on different parts, muscle or tissue.

Throughout the entire semester, I always had a pair of gloves during lab class. But at the last exam, I felt quite embarrassed and tried to blend in with my classmates who dissect toads weekly sans the rubber protection. My toad was inside a plastic bag and while the exam questionnaires were not distributed yet, I took my PhP5-worth toad and talked to it, “Behave ka ha? Wag ka malikot.”

It seemed to have understood me. It welcomed death with open arms. I didn’t want to fail the exam because of a sudden attack of pity, so I went through the procedure of pithing and dissecting as though it was like peeling potatoes for potato salad.

I can still remember how the toad lost its consciousness. As I pierced the pithing needle, I saw the toad close its eyes and stretch its neck forward a bit, then it returned to its original position. I twisted the needle in a 180-degree angle and started destroying the connection between its brain and spinal cord. I shook the toad to see if its legs would freely wiggle, an indication that it’s completely paralyzed.

Success! I thought. It meant twenty points. I also got to label most of the parts correctly, because I just killed a toad with my lab partner the day before the exam.

Five years later, do I still remember every toad muscle part? Hardly. Sometimes, I feel that these toads dissected by students like me died senseless deaths. Years later, the only significance that those lab activities left is the great feeling of accomplishment that I can pith with my bare hands and I was able to hold those cold-blooded creatures. I didn’t even appreciate how amazing their eyes are and that I should be doing some part in protecting their habitats. All I learned was pith and kill, just like how the Nazi were trained to just point and shoot at Jews.

And now, do we just let them vanish from the earth forever?

This “war against terrorism” is nothing but the human race’s egotistic, political mission to conquer the whole world. Why don’t you send your country’s top officer to swim the oceans and defend the country himself while he is equipped with all the necessary sensors and equipment?

The animal kingdom has nothing to do with your political bickering. Sure, they have the intrinsic talent that you just need, but survival is their only political agenda, not world dominance. So, spare these gifted animals of the dirty work of military defense. Terrorism is the human race's mess, not theirs.

Humans use animals for food, clothing, interior decoration, medicine, bomb-sniffing and as amusement in zoos. It would be abusive of us to maximize our power over other animals if we pursue that plan. Hope it won't push through.

The visit to Canon’s service center went well. A80 will be back in about two weeks and in top shape once again. I took a cab back to the office, and as we neared the building, I prepared the fare—two yellow bills and two five-peso coins. When the driver finally pulled over, I took a peak at the meter and sat back. I took the empty camera box, and the other five-peso coin slipped through my fingers and went straight through a tiny hole on the seat.

“Ay, nahulog po,” I said as I handed him what’s left of the fare. I tried to get the five-peso coin, but no coin popped out of the seat.
“Ok lang ‘yun,” the driver said.

I offered him another five peso, but he declined and said that he can get the other five-peso later. That’s nice of him.

That’s like the nth time I dropped my fare in a cab, FX, PUJ or PUB. Other drivers got pissed off at me, while others just smiled and told me it was fine, even though the coins went straight to their trash bins.

Slow suicide?
I took the longevity test based on a Harvard study, and I found out that I can live for up to 91 years! I really don’t want to live that long and bear the sorrowful mystery of life for a long time. I almost wanted to eat all the chicharon in the world, forget about going vegan and dump all the tea bags. I realized later in the day, however, that I might still be able to skydive at age 90! So it’s still no to slow suicide. My professor once told our class that she met an 88-year-old who still eats beef, can walk and may have the health of a 70-year-old.

I love swings and playgrounds.

They remind me of the simple joys of childhood. They bring back the days when all I had to get away from were the required nap time and meal time, which requires eating vegetables.

Why does life get complicated when people grow older? Or is it just too much worrying that turns it into a difficult puzzle? But think about it, life really does get different when people get older.

When I was nine years old, I didn't understand why our Math lessons involved rounding off numbers. Why change the value of a certain amount if it has its own value? I wondered.

Because I didn't understand the whole essence of rounding off, I also didn't understand the process. Our teacher had to explain it all over again. But why do we have to do that? I asked after she explained everything again. I forgot what she said, but back then, all I thought was that I just had to pass the subject--it was enough to shut me up. Add to that the feeling that I'm the slowest kid in class who had to ask the teacher to explain the lesson again.

As I grew older, I realized that rounding off numbers was just the beginning of difficult Math. I was then introduced to adding x's and y's and performing other arithmetic on letters. The rounding-off lesson haunted me again when we started dealing with pi. College subjects--even the non-math ones like journalism and science communication fundamentals--involved rounding-off numbers. The basic concept of rounding-off was also used for my thesis. And now, I still round off numbers when I budget my money.

Perhaps, just like the evolution of species, we, humans, also evolve from childhood to adulthood. I guess as we get older, we gain better understanding of things and phenomena around us. And sometimes, we lose the magical feeling and amusement we once had when we were young and innocent.

But when it comes to swings and playground, things are different. I revisit my childhood, and try to learn from innocence and the simplicity of life. And as Steve Jobs said, we get to "connect the dots" of our past. So from these human-ingenuity products of swings and playgrounds, I get to know why being a child is a whole bunch of fun. It's not because I've evolved to become a worrier; I've always been a worrier. I guess I'm just a bit overwhelmed with the loads of responsibilities of a grown-up, which involves taxes, financial security and doing more of rounding-off numbers.

The pay slip arrived this afternoon. Upon opening the “brownie,” I smiled to myself. I’m a whole lot richer!

However, there are a few catches. There’s my Christmas gift list, which is about only 10% in progress. The P990i and the Toshiba laptop are calling out for me. Add to that the stock market with eyebrows raised, awaiting for my comeback. There’s also my savings account thirsty for another large gulp of savings deposit.

I know that the money should go to my assets. But, don’t I deserve some bliss from earthly possessions and sharing the spirit of Christmas by giving material things?

The year is about to end. I have a few friends freaking out with the closing of 2006. And I know some who are probably excited—ending it with a bash of tying the knot or getting the most-wanted year-end bonus.

As for me, this year has, so far, been a lot of good and a lot of bad. In other words, it wasn’t that bad nor bland. And because I don’t want to regret any decision I made in 2005, which includes opting to get the job in the country over one overseas, I think that in general, I’ve been a happy person this year. But of course, I would be happier if a few more surprises will pop up before the year ends.

My annual summary of the good and the bad for this year can wait until next month. As of now, I just want to share some of my biggest realizations this year:

Realization # 1: I have low kikay IQ.

At 22, I still can’t properly apply eye liner and do my own manicure and pedicure. I don’t know how to determine the right shade of powder, blush, contact lens, and lip and nail colors for myself. I can’t mix and match accessories. I don’t know how to use mascara and I don’t have in-depth knowledge about the signs of aging. To be fair with myself, however, I can now apply cheek stain and I know that drinking a lot of water is underscored in health tips because of skin benefits.

I guess this lack of kikay knowledge is due to my lack of investment in knowledge resources. I’ve never invested in fashion magazines. In my entire life, I’ve only had one issue of Meg—and it was a seminar freebie, not something I got off the shelves of a magazine stand.

Once in a while, it’s cool to dress up. But I guess it’s really something not second nature to me. It’s not an effortless dish and dash of wardrobe pieces. I think it costs too much of my time thinking about the perfect matches. Sometimes, I’d rather be in classic shirt, denim pants, sneakers, wearing sun block with a dash of talcum powder, a pair of earrings topped with sun glasses or my nerdy half-rimmed eye glasses.

Realization # 2: I hate humidity, not outdoor activities.

I appreciate outdoor scenes and adventures, but the thing that limits me from doing outdoor activities in the country is the humidity.

I remember myself creating my list of activities. It included traveling alone to Bohol, Cebu or Davao, and doing some outdoor activities there, perhaps a picnic. Haha!

When my friends and I went to Quezon, I wanted to do some hiking. But because we woke up late and the sun was up, I was the first to back out of the outdoor activity.

Realization # 3: I live a simple life.

I have very few responsibilities. I don’t have dependents—I am the dependent of my parents. I don’t have animal pets—no one relies on me for food, shelter and security.

I don’t have issues with family, friends, colleagues at work and friends from my organization (at least I’m not aware of any).

I spend about 9 to 10 hours in the office during week days. More often than not, I have all the time in the world beyond 7:00PM on those days. I can meet up with friends. I can go window shopping. I can watch a movie. I can watch TV, read books and play Sudoku until I get sleepy. I can jog. And I can sleep for eight long hours.

During week ends, I have all the time in the world for family, pets, my organization and friends. I sometimes bring home some work, but I rarely do so.

Sometimes, I wonder if I can bear this life for the next few months. It’s like I’m craving for more responsibilities or more activities. I want to buy a dog. I want to go to the gym or do some strenuous physical activity. I want to attend art classes. I want to take a master’s degree. I want to start up a business. I want to learn how to cook. I feel like I have so much time, yet very few things to do.

From a recent seminar, I learned that people get very little “me” time, which I am abundant of, when they start a family. And so while I have a lot of time, I want to spend it doing a lot, too.