Mindfulness

Focusing, scattering, scattering, pulling back the strayed thoughts... after half an hour of scattering, focusing on the unfamiliar darkened recesses of the brain, complete blackness: the sinking.

Picking the Right Friends from the Madding Crowd

As we go along our life, we constantly meet different kinds of people. We talk to them, share lunch together, or join them in regular activities like weekend badminton games or movie watching. They most likely have smiles on their faces when they are with us. But the main question is whether we would embrace them as real friends in the truest definition of the term or treat them as mere acquaintances only. Remember our parents, genuinely concerned about our well-being, would remind us over dinner to wisely choose the people we would associate with? Failure to discern who you mingle with will eventually lead you to trouble or worse a miserable life due to bad company.

Yet, how do we spot who are real friends among the crowd that we come across with in our daily grind. How do we find the people who will be there beside us and honestly look after our welfare? The bad news is there are no books that give answers to all questions regarding friendship. Nevertheless, the good news is experience stands as a good ally coupled with common sense and an ounce of gut feel.

Know Thy Self First

Since what we are after are real true friends, we must understand that they are our extension. How many times have we heard the adage: birds of the same feathers flock together. Friends are our chosen family based on our standard emanating from our self-worth. To find real and true friends one first ought to have a notion of one-self. The individual necessarily has to acknowledge these innate prerequisites given about him:

• He is important and has value – a person must know that no matter what his state in life is, he matters. His views, perspective in life and his whole being is of value.
• He deserves to be happy – there are no signs anywhere that tells one must be miserable. He deserves all the opportunities by which he can be happy and fulfilled.

If one has already known these basic intrinsic rights, then he can proceed smoothly in identifying the persons whom he can call true friends. By then, it is automatic that he has a notion or a glimpse of what his objectives in life are. Establishing this set of intrinsic rights of his being, he should by then established a good self-esteem and confidence. That he is a ‘valuable cargo’ as one popular author puts it.

When one knows his value in life then it will be easier for him to discern who his real and true friends are. Not knowing one’s importance oftentimes is one of the reasons why an individual hangs out with the wrong set of people.

Signs of Who Your True Friends Are

• Life is wonderful when you are with them. Life as it is, is sometimes hard and difficult. But once you are with this set of people your problems seem easy to bear and are given solution. Have you noticed that there are people who make you weak and strong? The former are people called energy vampires. They suck your emotional energy by making you miserable one way or the other. The latter are the positive oriented people who are bearer of light. With these people the difficult problems are easy to solve; the impossible problems take time to be given solution.
• Your perspective are respected and understood. It is of course not always true that you are right about your views and opinions. But with true friends who are after your welfare, what you say has value, respected and understood before given indirect alternative views. When everything you say is always debunked, then these set of people do not treat you as their equals. Better stay away from them lest they imbibe in you that you are worthless.
• They are more goal-oriented. When you want to achieve something in life, hanging out with this kind of people more or less makes you more focused on attaining your goals. These people talk about action and applying it to their plans. It is better if you hang with them since they understand fully well what is in your head than not. More than that, they can even give moral support to whatever you want to attain.

These are NOT your Friends

• After hanging out with them, you are more miserable and problematic as before. Time spend with these set of people can be a wondrous kind of experience. You may have had a fine taste of fun. Life can even be construed as wonderful as you mingle with them. But once you are home, you find yourself in state of deeper misery. Your problems are not even solved but even become worse. Better stay out of these set of people; these people are what the cliché says as fair weathered friends.
• Sowing emotional poison is more of a rule during conversation. When the people you are with talk most of the time about other people and pass on to you harsh criticism and bad gossip about other people inside and outside your circle, you better avoid them like plague. These people suffer in great misery. And what do those experiencing misery are inclined to do? They want company. So they spread emotional poison.

The above list points out several things that you may consider when looking for true friends. You can add more to the list based from your experience. What is important is that you have a set of standard of who you can call as true friends.

Purpose of Writing and Murdering Ignacio Padilla

It has been a long time since I write something for myself. I don’t want to sound melodramatic here, but the thing that I’m pointing at is the time that I write not for money but towards the idealistic vision of perfecting the language which at the same time will be a sort of training ground for me to write finally a story.

This time is different. As I discover multitude of writing opportunities which will make me several hundred dollars richer, what I’m doing right now is bastardizing what I cherish most: that is to write without any financial consideration thus writing for the sake of writing itself.

I used to say that the goal of this blog is to let me find a virtual place on the Internet where I can hone my writing skills, where I can express the most difficult ideas that would pop out from my head, where the foundation of my writing skills will be laid down and perfected. But as another year has come and almost reaching halfway its journey around the sun to complete a full cycle, I noticed that I have been neglecting writing for this special place of mine on the internet.

Right now, I can already feel the burden of writing for bucks. The true and beautiful vision and goal that I have set for myself (and also the purpose why I started writing in the first place) is slowly being eroded by practical obligations to earn and put something in my stomach (and also to set myself abreast with writers who are into monetary considerations.)

Honestly speaking, I don’t harbor any feeling of animosity with these young and old writers who put their precious time and effort just to get by from the practical demands of everyday living. No, no there is nothing of that sort lingering in my mind. The truth is that I even admire them since what they are trying to achieve, through the use of their writing skills, is admirable. They are the practical believers that there is money in writing and from it they will try to squeeze ever cent to get a portion of this financial benefit.

My own rants are solely on my own which sit on my belief that I am here to write something that is more important according to my own standard of what is writing is all about.

Since I have mentioned already (did I?) that as years progresses, my posts in this blog are getting fewer and fewer, the goal that I have set for myself in terms of true writing is beginning to be a failure and a factor in the inevitable realization that I am getting lost in my true purpose. The practice of writing for money, without the compensating or balancing act of writing for the growth of my creative soul, is beginning to be felt already. I recall that when I used to write then, when the only purpose why I am into the process was to prepare myself for the big fight with my worthy opponent, everything was fine and good. The feeling that it brought me after sparring with my own capacity to write was nothing but pure and honest joy; a triumphant flexing of one’s imagination.

What can I say now? I barely read. I barely write an essay. I barely attempt to finish all the collected unfinished short stories that have piled up in my room (and several of them have already been lost in oblivion because I can hardly remember where did I put them for keeping.)

A lonely, arduous battle to win. The challenges are almost insurmountable. If Hemingway was not able to kill me during the first years of my venture into writing, right now, what is killing me is the obligation to keep a good look at the healthiness of my pocket.

Nevertheless, the fight is not yet over. It still has to come. The only problem is that I am running out of time. I also still haven’t bought that ticket to go to Mexico (or Spain) to kill Ignacio Padilla since he is the man I’m planning to murder.

Now, back to reality.

The Fall to Fly

After downing several cups of strong black coffee with the intent to warm up my stomach and wake up my slumbering brain which totally could not think of anything, the goal right now is to speed-type, pound on the keyboard with all my might and mental prowess to keep abreast with the velocity of caffeine-induced thinking.

Ending a short stint in a writing job that I consider to be a corruption of my philosophy of what writing should be, I am left with a blank, sluggish mind that could not think of anything but my inability to write. Coupled with frustration and realization of the permanence of change, the only option available to me is to vent, in this short moment of lucidity, my energy on writing what I in the first place set as the reason and the cause as to why I put myself in this journey and lifetime of romance with the language.

Failure is not an option. It could never be. On the second thought, this strong statement is nothing but a show of useless chest-thumping. Failure it will be if I don’t start at this very moment.

So let go of the rock that support me and let me fall; for it is the only way that I can fly.

Here we go…

snapbomb

There is no doubt that some of you, with the intent to squeeze any money from writing a blog, tried to subscribe to Google Adsense. There is nothing wrong with that. The only problem with subscribing to Adsense is the seemed futility of the exercise since barely any money can be earned from it since your visitors still have to click on the advertisement to give you any monetary return.

Now, for those who want to earn a quick buck and still write their blogs, there is now an alternative tool which can facilitate this. Thanks to the snapbomb.com the realization of having fun writing a blog and at the same time earning money can be done.

There is no necessary fee to join this new scheme. All you have to do is sign-up on snapbomb.com and start counting your earnings.

You write while you earn. What can be better than that.

Haloscan and Comments

There is no excuse for my shortcoming in maintaining this blog, especially in tracking down all the comments that I gather from transient visitors. I must admit that the moment I opened an account with haloscan to take care of this aspect, it was also the time that I stopped checking who are the ones who are putting comments on the writings that I have been doing here. Call it pure laziness or failure on my part to establish connection with my visitors or just my inability to manage my small space on the net. Still there is no excuse for it.

I would just like to apologize for those people who find time to read my posts and react on them. As of this moment, I still have to wait for old comments to be pulled out from the archived reactions in my haloscan and read them one by one.

Nevertheless, there is one comment that I wish I should have read the day she had posted it in my haloscan. Grace Chong, author of one of my favorite inspirational books Gift of Grace 2, graced my page by saying thank you for including her book as one of my reading list. I know I have written something about it in one of my entries but can’t recall whether it was about my favorite section in her book My Client Ito. Late as it is, it is not that late to say that I learned a lot just from that one section. And I thank her for writing that.

Now, got to do some readings and writings first since this coming afternoon will be a hectic time for me.

Meditation for the Closing Year

This year is about to close. The usual wont in media or even in personal journals, for that matter, during this time of the year is giving a year-end report of the year that was. That is the usual practice. During this time when the date of the year changes and progresses into a different one, everybody is afflicted by the epidemic of nostalgia. This is the time when one looks back at the closing year with an audible exhalation the same way when one finishes a nice, good book.

Yet, no matter how bad the year that was, when one succumbs to the temptation of backtracking through time and recalling the past year, one always miraculously finds the year as bearable and somehow has brought happy moments to him. There may be some events that we can call undesirable to the memory but these, too, have somehow lost their pain or undesirability because time has already healed the wounds they have caused the person. The year that was then, on a general personal level, is something worthy to look back at.

The question as to why is this so? Why when we recall the year that was or even the previous years, even if those years were tough, we cherish it as something special to recall and remember at. If one remembers even the hardest experience he suffered in the past, he would think of it with a smile in his lips.

The answer to the question is the simple reason that one has able to hurdle passed the challenges and hassles that came his way. The person has already endured the pain and suffering of life. And the capacity to look back at those moments of dire straits means success in strengthening one’s soul. So the recollection is a remembering of sweet pain that brought a lot of lessons in life, about life, about being human.

If we borrow Nietzsche’s words: If it doesn’t kill you it can only make your stronger. Indeed, the blows and beatings that a person receives can only make him stronger in due time. And this time almost always comes when the year ends for the reason that this is the time when a person stops for a moment to examine the days that have gone. He stops regular routine to watch the vista of the invisible passing of time; the completion of one revolution of planet earth around the sun. This is the time when everything that happened yesterday down to the twelfth month will be reviewed by nostalgic eyes and a heart that throbs purely of fluid serenity.

There is then, as I mentioned in the aspect of personal level, no such bad previous year. Or if we go a little further, no bad past per se. Those bad events in our past are what makes us stronger; strengthens our souls.

Yes, strengthens our souls.

Stones Along the Path of My Journey

I know already where the story will end. Or how shall I put it, where the dream will end. I have heard, seen and read countless of the same fate that same dreamers have suffered. All of them had to face the first barrier set along their path and they all succumbed to raise their hands and call it quits. Some accepted the fate of their dreams as nothing as the passing fancy of an adolescent fling with the language and call it not for them to pursue to the hilt. While some, as they go on with their lives defeated by the call of reason to be practical in their actions, still think from time to time as the winds of inspiration touch their skin how would they have fared if they continued dreaming and continued in spite of the practical challenges. Yet, a few with the stomach of steel and guts of stone, persisted; though some of these few proved to be mediocre, a handful have survived the litmus test and able to realize their visions they have seen when they were younger.

These thoughts entered my mind while I dug my head in the effort to fulfill the responsibilities called by my job. I know the importance of having a job. What comes along with it is the easy life of being able to fulfill the necessities to live a practical, decent existence. You have the chance to eat out, go anywhere you please and have the opportunity, ironically, the books that you need to grow as a dreamer.

Yet, reluctance starts to gnaw in my guts and stomach, experiencing a queasy, dreadful feeling that I am straying from the purpose as to the reason why I started trying to learn how to write at all as I perform the duties of my work.

This case is simple so it seems. But definitely, the answer is already firmly etched in my soul. I forgot that this thing have been anticipated well ahead before I ventured in my writerly journey.

Temporary Closed

Due to some personal reasons, this blog is temporarily closed for the meantime.

Waiting

For the meantime, there is nothing else for me to do but wait. I wouldn’t call it laziness or plain procrastination. I hate to call it that way. I’m on a search like a predator for my right and true writing voice. And the best way to do that is searching by not searching.

I will just take my time feeling, seeing, observing, and, yes, waiting for the time when I can finally write everything that I learned. I can afford this since time is still on my side.

There’s no need to rush things up. Right now, what I’m building up is the foundation of the things that I will write. There’s no need to rush and write crappy stories and ride on the bandwagon of what is trendy today in the local literary scene.

Yes, I’m gonna watch the sprouting young creatives force themselves in in the local scene. I will just be content waiting for my rightful time to come.

I’m near of calling myself a writer – the real writer I mean. What I am waiting is what I’m gonna write about and how I’m gonna write it.

One day, I’m gonna wake up and would start pounding on my keyboard and really write.

What I can glimpse at, as of now, of what I would write soon are stories that will uplift and keep the spirit of my readers up; stories that will make them feel no pain but understanding; stories that will make the dust of stars in their veins pumping and make them realize that they are sons of God, precious cargo without doubt.

Story No. 1

Ignacio Marquez was a man of quiet, calm temperament that when he noticed that his vision was becoming blurred, the first thing he thought of was he was tired from work and needed a rest. With blurring vision, he looked up from the book he was reading to the wall clock on the wall to see what time it was already. Yet, he could not read the hands of the clock. There was a slow progressing dimness around him. Then like the certainty of the coming of the night, everything around him was enveloped in full, dense darkness: the gray ceiling where the fan was, the portrait of his family on the wall, the window through which he could see the street outside went black.

He groped through the darkness fearing he just went blind but he could not remember any previous instance when he had a problem with his vision. He did not even wear glasses even if he was reading. He walked on the floor barefooted but what he felt was a strange softness of the earth. Turning his head around in search for light, he saw a flicker somewhere before him: a tiny point of white light. The ground was rough on his soles still he strode forward.

He knew he was somewhere else already. Where was he before? In his room, sitting on the bed reading the evening paper as he listened to the stereo blaring Yanni’s Aria. The day had been long and he was beat up dealing with numbers on the spreadsheet balancing a book.

As he reached out for the light, he had difficulty breathing. He could not breathe; he was choking on the air that he was inhaling. He was being poisoned by the strange nature he had found himself. He was on the verge of passing out and thought he was already dying. There was already heaviness on his limbs and fear was starting to get a strong grip on him; strong enough for him to defecate in his pants. While his hair stood on its ends.

The thin light shone brighter; bringing into light a rainforest where he stood at the center. The smell of the richness of the ground carpeted by dead leaves wafted through his now extra-sensitive nostrils.

He found himself crouching on the earth with all his limbs on the earth. He tried to walk but he noticed that he was walking with four feet. He had no arms. He roamed around the forest, moving in full gait.

What can you feel?

I feel strange. I feel like I’m a prehistoric cat, a panther maybe. I’m tired and beaten up and my tongue is drooling with saliva. I can feel the rich foliage of the rainforest; I can even hear the succession of thunder in the heavens and see the blast of lightning hitting one of the hundred-year old trees before me, splitting it with force of fire. I feel surrounded. There are a thousand enemies surrounding me, hooting as they lurk behind the trees. I am their prey. Any moment they will feast on my flesh and innards, toss my bones to the ground like a useless trophy. I know it will happen soon. But I’m ready for them since it seems I have known them already. Yet, I’m running away from them; they are too many for me to fight against with. I can hear their hoots and the grinding of their teeth, flashing white for my precious flesh. I feel sleepy but I cannot afford to sleep and rest.

Now I feel I can’t move. Roots are beginning to grow on my paws, digging within the earth. I’m stuck. My agile slender body metamorphoses into a tender soft stalk. I’m a plant now. A plant. I can breathe in the pure universe: oxygen. And fear has subsided now. There are no more enemies, no more predators hunting and running after me. I’m safe.

On the tip of the roots that slithered deep into the ground, I can sense a weak stream of water running along within. I’m hugging the earth and I can hear the brooks and streams and rivers streaming down toward the sea. And the soft winds caress my leaves as I sway with it.

Are you afraid?

Nope. I can sense everything around me fading into something; a marsh of clear water with a muddy bottom. I’m already swimming under it, free and without fear. I’m with a school of small fish heading for the river. Everything it seems is marsh and river. There is no land. It is the beginning of the world.

I can feel oneness with everything. I’m the prehistoric rock, boulder, sand and earth.

A flash of light come whirling with me; fast and even becoming faster. I’m being hurled in the void of space.

Then what?

Then time is advancing. Fast. The sun, earth and the planets are forming.

Give me a pen.

Here.

Here is where I am.

It’s a circle with a dot at the center.

Yes.

The dot is you.

Yes.

You are at the center of everything.

Yes.

Can you remember your name?

I have no name.

Do you know where you are now?

No.

To be continued….

This is a new story I’m trying to work on; the first this year. Evidently, there is still that propensity to tell stories in an inward perspective, brought probably by my long years of writing journals which are all about my thoughts and experiences. I have been noticing that there is always an inclination to write stories that only deal with an individual. Nevertheless, I hope this one will be written until its last word so finish the story. The struggle is still on and I am in my lab still scheming and dreaming and working on my text.

Another Miss

I recently had an interview with an editor looking for a staff-writer/associate editor. The text that I received a week prior to the interview proper was promising. The text message that was sent to me told me to visit a certain site in the Internet and study it. The site is all about hardware a techno geek would drool over having his hands on. The site deals about the latest computer processors, laptops, mobile phones, mp3 players, gaming rigs, and even the not-so exciting projectors.

It was my first time to get a schedule for a job interview with a gap of a week after the sought announcement. And the text message instructed me to study. Yes, to study. I said to myself that this prospective employer is different since it was like a college professor ordering me to cram for what seemed to be a Final Exam.

Without an Internet access and cash strapped, I went back and forth at Netopia to copy paste the site’s new articles, laptop reviews, and everything that I thought important for the exam (prospective employers usually say it is an interview but that comes after the exam and a week at least of waiting).

Indeed I learned about the ongoing trend in personal computing merging with home entertainment; HDTV, that’s High Definition TV for you, as the coming craze for us techno consumers; Intel’s Centrino Processor evolves into a more efficient Core 2 Duo, and, like every military intelligent operations, they have codenames. Carmel for Centrino I think and the latter Banias, if my memory serves me right.

It was only unfortunate that the 10-item first-part exam wanted a more deep knowledge of IT, something that only a special few knows like an esoteric teachings. But I’m getting ahead of my story.

There is nothing more exciting to review and get abreast of than music other than the fast-pace, bullet-speed (at the speed rate of 18 months at the average) continuous evolution of Information Technology. There is always something new coming out: faster, better, and sleeker. If music critics are always being dumped by bad albums and sample music from upcoming bands which make them frown at their reviews, I can only think that that is rare to happen in the IT industry. In IT industry, there is only one direction it is heading: innovation and perfection. It is like a sound heavy-laden with riffs that keep on getting perfected and rearrange to the benefit of tranced listeners.

When it finally got to the day that I got drilled by questions by the editor, everything suddenly came crushing down on me. I am left behind by the times. The first question thrown at me was whether I know how to assemble a PC. Good God! I know but never did it alone. I looked like a wet chicken who didn’t know anything about computers. My mouth dried, I hardly could speak and lost the confidence to say my piece in style.

But I yakked all the way till the end of the interview about what little do I know about computers. I don’t know if the editor was still listening in awe or in frustration.

In the end, the exams was shoved toward me and told to take them home. A disaster. I know.

But boy, how did I studied for that interview.

You know the end of the story of course.

A Young Creative Passed Away

I rarely read my links in my blog due to the reason that I don’t have the means: no internet access in my home computer.

But recently, I visited the blogsite of Dean Alfar, dated July 9. There’s a bad news. A young poet by the name of Ana Neri just passed away.

No, I don’t personally know Ana Neri, nor heard of her name until I read Dean’s post. Yet, in this young creative heart of mine, there is something that bleeds for the passing of this young creative person.

I know in the first place how they (the creative people) dream of making it big in the literary scene in this country and probably internationally. On how they aim of someday publishing a book with their name on its cover and between its covers all they learned from this world, sharing their one dime of wisdom to ardent readers of theirs.

It is sad. I am sad. Even though I didn’t hear of Ana Neri before, I know it is a lost for everyone of us. Here we are on a race and practicing our craft or trying to plan to write someday our masterpieces, yet when someone among us creative people bite the dust it’s a lost through and through for the community of writers and poets. And for the whole humanity who think and feel.

I might have no rights to say this, but Ana Neri how I wish you have stayed a little longer.

See you at the crossroad.

Searching for the Enlightened One

I watched over on the National Geographic their presentation At the Edge of the Earth (pardon if I failed to remember the program’s title) the life of buddhists somewhere in Tibet. I was only able catch part of the program but the effect on me was tremendous. And for somebody who can boldly say that I am not a Christian and does not have a religion, converting to Tibetian Buddism for me is enticing.

Fortunately, my youngest sister too has an interest in this philosophy cum religion. So on this day, we planned to take a ‘pilgrim’, as she described it while we were on a pedicab on the way to a Buddist temple.

Armed with nothing but the knowledge that Buddist temples are located somewhere in Manila, somewhere near Chinatown, we headed to for the city smirking over our silly plan.

The question was how would we explain our unexpected visit to the temple? In what way would we talk to the Buddist monks if we were already before them? Are we going to pretend as students (I’ve graduated a more than a decade ago and only my sister is the student) researching over their religion? Or are we going to be straightforward that we have plan to convert or to dig deeper into their religion.

Honestly speaking we didn’t know what to do that made us laugh even more. All we want was to know, and we were dead serious about it, is what Buddism is all about and luckily follow the footpath towards enlightenment.

For good luck, I brought a copy of Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreement. After having a quick lunch, we started our ‘pilgrim’.

We alighted at the Carriedo Station of LRT, and on the way down, passing stalls selling DVDs, a rare find of Bob Marley’s concerts made me buy it in an instant, but that is another story.

My rule in looking for a place I don’t know where is to ask people until I reach my goal. This is easy to do if you have enough dough in your pocket because it means using transportation and you need money for that. And this is exactly the style that we employed in our short ‘pilgrim’.

When we reached Sta. Cruz in Manila, the goal was to know where Chinatown is. When we entered Chinatown, it seemed we were transported into a different, alien place we could not describe. Ever corner was all stores of different wares.
A number of questions where we could find a temple or a congregation of buddist led us to enter alleys until we found somebody who directed us to take a pedicab, going past Tutuban, at Narra St. where he said buddist monks resides.

Now, this is the sad part of the story. When we reached the Buddist temple in Narra St. of Manila, we were ‘shooed away’ as student researchers by the administrator of the church. The Chinese man whom we talked to was surprised when I approached him. He seemed to have seen a ghost. I assumed that he was fearful of a pure-bred Filipino. He said he would be busy for the rest of the day making white-lies that he still had to attend to something.

So what happened in our short piligrim in searching for the Enlightened One: NOTHING.

I would also like to use this post as a call for people who know about Buddism to please inform me where to go and search the footpath of the Enlightened One.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Several wounds in my feet that would not heal soon. A red flag was raised. I am growing old and complication in health is popping up. I could be diabetic. I thought of the last several months that I had been splurging in sodas. It could have triggered a family health problem with sugar in the body.

I have to check my sugar level. But before that, I have to take in antibiotics for the wounds. If ever I have had my sugar level checked and the result is positive, then there would rise another problem. The question now is whether I would have to maintain and keep my body healthy by insulin.

Then I realized that I am growing old. It is expected that my body, like a machine would succumb in its wear and tear, is starting to fail.

Well growing old is not a problem. But the problem that I see is money. Dough. I should have had a health insurance just for the sake of minimizing health related expenses.

And I see all this concern with money with the fact that I am growing old but I still have no regular job.

Drat! Life is tough.

But it is only tiny matter compared with what is within me (I think I heard this before in a commercial). I can take it.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

This story could have been started with the cliché opening phrase of happening once upon a time. Anyway, what is the difference from the old times and now? Nothing so it seems. Everything that is happening now happened before. Same old story, same old pain, same suffering, same joy and same celebration of life.

This story is about an old man. He lives in his prefab row-house alone. In the neighborhood, he is known as a good carpenter because of his relative knowledge in building houses and in repairing it.

We can say that he is a good grumpy old man. Yes, he is sociable to some extent but many a people among his neighborhood do not like him for his grumpiness. He is known for his false principle that most of the time gets him into a heated argument. So this old man does not have an intimate, close friend.

Alone and without a wife, he lives in his cold house staring at the ceiling for lizards as his neighbors describe his nights.

I am only talking about this because I saw the old man the other day loitering, sitting on a bench in the small mall near us. When our eyes met, there was that embarrassed look in his eyes. Liked a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he reasoned out that he should have had gone to the city. I said bye to him and asked if he wanted to go back to our place alone. He said no. That he would still stay there.

I just went away feeling his intense boredom about life.

If I Were a Superhero

If you are a superhero what would you be and what powers would you have?

This was one of the supposed essays I should have had answered the previous week when I applied as a web content writer. But listlessness or out of carelessness, I thought I should have only given the question a 100-word essay.

If I would be a superhero what power should I have? The question is tough and silly on the second thought given the fact that I’m already past the age of Christ.

What powers should I have, I would prefer having the power and knowledge of the underlying ‘realities’ of our world. I don’t know if this is the product of reading Castaneda but somehow it has something to do with it.

If I have this power, I could manipulate the world, the physical world. I can bend spoon like a Buddhist monk. I can hop over the deck of buildings with ease – no, without a web, but by sheer force of what I know about the universe and its design. I can easily learn kung fu, aikido, taekwando, and karate in seconds. I can manoeuvre any vehicle that I want.

If these descriptions are coming to you with some familiarity, yes, they all come from the trilogy Matrix. When I watched this movie, it struck and spellbound me. I was slouching at the back seat of my older brother’s car staring blankly at the moonless sky. What if this universe is not the real universe that there is? Possible.

Anyway, what I was thinking then when I was answering the question was to be the Neo; the One.

Yet, on the second thought, who I could come close to the characters in the Matrix is Morpheus.

You’ll learn it when I smile.

All Talk

I recall the days when I discerned that all I wanted in life is to be a writer. A sophomore in a well-known university and surrounded by peers who had the same vision and hope for themselves outside the campus, we talked after classes in the soccer field digging Hemingway and Gabo. We yakked also all about the books that we had just read and if we understood them well. The discussion would last until the guards in blue would shoo us to go home because it was already late in the night.

Those were the days. I was surrounded by peers who write when they reached home while what I seemed to do then was to yak about wanting to be a writer. I finished my college days still not knowing how to write. I remember that we were known to be good writers but probably that was true for my peers. But not for me because I could not even get myself write past the first sentence. English language is a hard boulder to chip and I was getting nowhere understanding it.

I remember this remote past for what I seem to do right now is rest on my laureates of getting published by some magazines and winning some writing prizes. Everyone in the neighbourhood knows that I write, that I am a writer.
But if only they knew that I no longer write as much as I used to do then. Nor read for that matter. I’m getting in the full cycle of being a talker rather than being a true writer.

I still have to write that first story that would be published with my byline, something which is due for more than a decade already. The sad part is that there is still no material for me to work on so that promise to myself is still far from reality.

Right now, a lot of things, practical responsibilities have been making me busy. I’m on the look out for a good writing job which is hard to come by. And while it is making me busy, I’m getting lazy trying to write.

But everybody is still calling me a writer. Something that is not true right now because I’m more of a talker.

Been Had

I’ve been had.

In searching for a job the familiar, most used words by the screener/interviewer to the helpless reject is the promise of giving them a ring: Hintayin mo na lang ang tawag namin next week.

Now, to the uninitiated and tyro in the art of job hunting, this promise means a hopeful positive one. The job hunter, unscathed and never been beaten out there in the employment market, succumbs to the apple of temptation of waiting for the call thinking that the interviewer meant what he had said.

The week is long and before the job hunter knew it, he will discover that there will be no call. He has been given the words of appeasement and he bit on it. This is why those veterans in job hunting knew the moment they step out of the prospective employer’s office if they have been axed or if there is something to hope for. So they will ask the tyro: Anong sabi ‘yo?

Tyro: Tatawagan na lang daw ako.

The Veteran: Wag mo na asahan yan.

In the long time of experience in the hardship of job hunting, this ‘exit’ words by the interviewer is the most dreaded words I anticipate. It has been used for a very long time and it has been this way since I ever remember.

But in my recent experience, it seems this ‘exit’ words has been given a strain more potent than ever before that a veteran will surely bite on off guard, without knowing he is being had by the wily screener/interviewer.

Nevertheless, I take the responsibility of being rejected because of the things I yakked during the interview and by losing my nerves that kept me stuttering. Who in his right mind will say he has plans to publish a book someday. The logic is awry considering I’m already past the age of Christ and not connected with they academe and what more this plan is almost impossible in our country.

Going back to the subject of this post, the new strain of ‘exit’ words used to me by the screener/interviewer is definitely a deft one.

I was told to set a time the following week for an interview with the manager of the department which the vacancy falls under. I was even told to wear proper business attire when I show up. Just wait for the call in the middle of week (this drat! I failed to anticipate a negative aspect of the interview).

I waited patiently and with eagerness for a week only to realize that I have been had.

Underground Election Gift-giving

Several nights before the election, a neighbor known for her affiliation with the local candidates talked us over the prospect of being commissioned to be poll watchers. Together with another neighbor, who stood as one of the coordinators, counted every registered voter in our house. They say all of us would be fielded as poll watchers come election day. Good news considering that we needed money.

Beside us, several neighbors were also promised to be poll watchers.

The pay and the responsibilities were five hundred at the end of the day and all we had to do was stay at the polling place to watch over flying-voters. Come counting time, our responsibilities would be over and an easy cash of Ninoy would be ready for our wallets.

Actually, there is nothing new about this. Me being a poll watcher. I have been a PPCRV watcher before. But the only difference now is the lure of the pay and earning a quick cash which was mostly welcome.

Hour before the election proper I was asked to go to our coordinator. I was expecting a long day in the precinct and a lot of fun mingling with voters. I thought what would happen was the usual giving off of final instruction for our candidates. But instead I was handed two small envelopes and copies of sample ballots with the suggestive instruction that I knew what to do. Inside the small envelopes was two hundred peso bills. Small money but cash nevertheless.

I innocently assumed that the money was an installment pay for the work ahead of us.

I asked, “What precinct would we guard?”

“No,” the coordinator said. “There was a change of plan.”

“Oh,” I said to myself, smiling devilishly.

I have been a voter for a long time and have heard of vote buying. But this is the only time when I was confronted by the actual practice.

What am I to do? I asked myself. Give back the money and say a litany of election ethics that we should follow and get on to talk that this is the reason why nothing is happening in our poor country?

No. I kept the money.

When we were herded off to the polling place, I threw the sample ballots bearing the names of the candidates who obviously were behind this vote buying practice.

I chose the candidates that I felt worthy of my effort to drag myself at the polling place, which was like a trek to the mountain. I filled only the slots for the national election: the senatorial slots and the congressional. The local positions I just dashed off with long hypen to signify that I didn’t have any prospective candidates for the positions.

On the second thought, I might as well have had put coach Flip Saunders’ name for the mayoralty candidate and the rest of the line-up of the Detroit Pistons for the remaining positions.

How the Game was Played

I mentioned in my previous post that I had not got the opportunity to catch live the Game 3 of the Pistons vs the Bulls. All I got was the incomplete information from my cousin telling me that the Pistons won the game therefore setting the series in a comfortable 3-0 lead of the series.

Well, I was able to catch the reply of the game at Start Sports and see for myself how the Pistons dismantled the young, spunky Chicago Bulls.

The first half was a low-scoring game for the Pistons, perennially missing their shots and bungling their seemed perfect offensive plays.

The Pistons was having a taste of their own bitter medicine what with the aggressive defense of the Bulls. The Bulls looked like hungry pack of wolves ready to eat alive the Pistons. Bull’s Luol Deng, Ben Wallace and Ben Gordon leaded their team in overlording the boards and defense, and shooting above par compared with the Pistons who seemed could not get their acts together.

The first half finished off with the Bulls having a comfortable, almost a sure-win lead of 19 points against the Pistons. The Pistons looked beaten-up and a no-match in the United Arena of the Bulls; the statue of flying Michael Jordan stood outside the stadium as if to imply that the Bulls is on the rampage again and now on the rebound and ready to move toward the Eastern Finals, then the Finals proper to earn another ring.

The Pistons in my imagination were fidgeting in their locker room, panicking and being berated by coach Flip Saunders for their bad game. The fans of the Pistons in front of their tubes all over the world were pulling their hair in disbelief on how come their team feared badly at the court let the young, fast and seemed hungrier Bulls made a rampage in the court at their expense.

The second half started. I watched with doubts whether what my cousin said to me was true: that the Pistons won Game 3.

I could not see any trace of panic from the players of the Pistons yet could still see the lunging horns of the Bulls ready for the kill.

Several minutes after the start of the second half, the Pistons was able to chip out the lead of the Bulls by four, making the homecourt team’s lead down to 15.

That was when I saw the aura of the Pistons – the leading team in the NBA today and if you would agree with their players’ statements ought to be the NBA Champions for four seasons. The Pistons’ aura and gait on the basketball court told of mental toughness and sure composure. There was no tinge of an expected panic in their faces. They are the Pistons and they learned in their long years of battle in the court that a 19-point deficit is no reason to lose heart or panicky about.

Pistons captain ball Chauncey Billups orchestrated the well-maneuvered comeback of his team with toughness of spirit used of shutting down their opponents with surgical military precision. They started making shots, making stops and chipping eventually the lead of the Bulls.

On the other hand, the Bulls, as characteristics of a young ballteam, began to fumble, tremble because they realized that the Pistons was advancing through their defense and that they were in trouble with this veteran team.

At the end of Game 3, the Pistons marked their 3-0 lead in this second-round playoffs of the Eastern Conference.

The Game could have been a blow-out game against the Pistons. But resiliency, composure and mental toughness made them overturn the tide to win Game 3 and post a 3-0 lead which as mathematical statistics proves is a sure win scenario for them.

Now, I don’t know if there’s a game as I write this between these two teams, but even if my cable provider doesn’t air it, I anticipate the Pistons moving up to the Eastern Conference Finals.