Category: Uncategorized

WEEEEE!

One of the perks of being on “extended” vacation is being able to do something I’ve always wanted to do – drive around town early in the morning just to enjoy the morning sun and closely pay attention to and observe the things that you normally pass by obliviously in the blur of your everyday trek to work. It’s quite enlightening, really.

– McDo at Quezon Avenue, at the same intersection where you could find National Bookstore, Jollibee and Mercury Drug (I could never remember the street name) is jam-packed during breakfast. Yes, much more than McDo El Pueblo. Which is a little surprising since the locale isn’t exactly the bustling commercial spot-type that Ortigas Center is.

– You could really only enjoy an eat-all-you-can breakfast buffet when you don’t have anything else to do for the rest of the day. This is so true at least for me because I tend to get my money’s worth on buffets (is why I try to limit my binges to a max of twice every six months). This case particularly I’m talking about the breakfast buffet at Grills & Sizzles at the corner of Times and Examiner. Which is good, but not as good as that breakfast buffet served by Something Fishy over at Eastwood City (you get to try a lot of breakfast treats when your work routinely takes you to the wee hours of the morning, like mine did).

– You know what fitness gurus say about warming up first before going back to your workout regimen if you’re coming back from a long lull (in my case, two months). It is true – don’t ever see it as nothing more than popular fitness blabber for selling Men’s Health magazines – if you don’t, it WILL hurt in the morning, and in the following two mornings at the least. Well, that’s exactly what I had in mind when, before hitting the boxing gym again I decided to loosen up first on my Orbitrek cross-trainer. Lesson learned: just because it’s a home exercise equipment doesn’t mean it’s light enough for loosening up after an extended sedentary hiatus. Hell no. My legs hurt like hell the next day, and my ribs were strained to near-fracture point. Next time (though I hope there won’t be a next time), I’ll settle for the simpler push-up.

– Even after all these years, there are still a good number of pasaway drivers who think they could get away with ignoring the number-coding rule (trivia: the Philippine road rule on number-coding was once listed in some website as among the stupidest government laws enacted).

– It pays to be a morning person, I discovered. I think I’ll start calling it in much earlier so I could enjoy more eventful mornings like these before I eventually go back to work (which I suspect is approaching real fast).

Good morning, everyone

I discovered this morning that sometimes you do know when you’re talking in your sleep. It was probably because I was already half-awake that I remembered this dream I had. About my ex, Grace, and how we bumped into each other at an East Bay town situated about an hour away from San Francisco. We become sort of friends again. Then one day I was looking for her at her house and couldn’t find her. When I ran into her later that day she said she went to drive a “friend” of hers (a Chinese-Fil-Am who had been flirting with her) to the airport, and then saw a movie. Knowing her, alarm signals immediately went off in my head, which was confirmed when I saw that Chinese-Fil-Am guy still later that day – turns out they never went to the airport. She said she saw a movie alone to account for the hours she was gone. I said “I don’t buy it” after which she gave me a treatment of her patented guilty silence.

Here’s where I knew I was talking in my sleep, when I told her “Eto ka na naman. After all these years hindi pa rin natatapos ‘yang kalokohan mo. Bahala ka na nga. Buhay mo naman saka pamilya mo ang sinisira mo. Siguro kaya hindi tayo nagkatuluyan para hindi ako ang mamroblema sa ‘yo.”

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Disclaimer: the above were all just a dream. Grace and I didn’t end up with each other because she two-timed me. Three times (yeah, making me one of the dumbest guys on the planet, I know). But I haven’t heard from her in two years so I really don’t know where she is or what she’s been doing with her life. No idea whatsoever.

The point is this: it’s been years and I still sporadically find myself thinking or having dreams about her, particularly about her unfaithfulness. The issue of a girl’s infidelity delivers a particularly staggering impact because of the hard times I’ve had to go through brought about by her repeated two-timing (I suspect at least 4 guys she had slept with in the 6 years we were together – one of the 4 is confirmed. That was how dumb I was then).

So, does this mean I still love her? Or I still have feelings for her of some sort? Or I’m still hurting?

Nope. If any of the above were true, I wouldn’t be able to speak openly about this in a medium where my wife could see. I wouldn’t be able to speak openly about this to her at all. But I could, and I do. So no, no leftover feelings, no leftover hurt.

But “it left a scar”, so said Sara Milas, Eva Mendes‘ character in the movie Hitch.

Yeah. Sometimes the wound cuts so deep that although you’ve already healed, it still leaves a scar. The painful experience becomes something that you will always remember for the rest of your life.

Is it a bad thing? No, not necessarily. Scars of past “war wounds” only become a bad thing when we misinterpret in entirely. Case in point: a friend of mine, when speaking about his ex, always wonders if maybe he still loves her. I wouldn’t know for sure, but all indications tell me that it’s a scar he’s mistaking for something else.

A scar is nothing more than a mark where a serious injury used to be. We should never play the romantic by seeing it as something else – as some sort of a link in the past that maybe we should never have left behind, and that maybe we should at least catch up with. Some hurts are so serious that you never forget. Remembering the boy and remembering the feelings are two different things (Joey Albert, wahahaha ), and we should learn to discern which is which in order for us to get on with our lives.

So it’s okay to remember, really. Just don’t misconstrue it as “having something left over”. You can breathe a sigh of relief now because it’s done. Kaput. Finished. You just have a scar. You’re fine. No problem.

1) For some reason I’m reminded again of this nursing student friend I had some years ago. Young, pretty, but with a streak of rebellion in her. For a while she was able to get her act together after joining a group of people dedicated to serving the Lord through music. Got very active in the ministry, read her bible almost everyday, attended weekly devotions and even undertook voice training in an effort to serve better.

But then, there came a period when she had to spend a lot of time with her friends at school for a group project. Went on a lot of out-of-town trips that were partly business and partly pleasure. Ever vigilant, her friends at church gave her some precautionary talk about not spending any more time with this group than is necessary, or something like that. “I can handle it,” she answered. She was clearly having the time of her life, which was probably natural since she’s young and probably enjoying all kinds of new experiences with her new group of friends.

One day, over YM, she blurted at my wife “PUTANG-INA MO!!!”

2) Another friend, a pastor’s wife. Also totally dedicated to the Lord and her family. She was also very intelligent, headstrong, and an overachiever, the type that wouldn’t let go of an anything without doing something substantial first. A woman who values her career almost as much as she does her family, she excelled at her job and made a lot of important friends in the business. Invested a lot of herself, time and effort into her career and met all sorts of people. At the same time, she tried to spare some time for the ministry as well.

But things hadn’t been easy. She tried to serve two masters. Believed in her inherent ability to juggle two different worlds, both of which demanded a lot from her. But she clearly became immersed with only one, and she wound up pouring her heart to her career more than she probably should have.

Next thing I know, she was having an affair with a coworker.

3) Another story about a pastor. No details. Simply that this pastor thought that socializing and spending time with some of his female friends poses no danger since he’s confident with his spirituality. He ended up having an affair with one of them just the same.

4) Jimmy Swaggart. Nuff said.

All of the above happened a pretty long time ago. All of the people I mentioned had repented since then and become straight with God again.

But how many people did they cause to stumble before repenting? How many people did they hurt in the process?

Two verses come to mind:

“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’ ” (1 Corinthians 15:33)

“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Corinthians 10:12)

I don’t care how much you claim that you still attend regular devotions and bible studies. As long as you continue to expose yourselves to situations where you could fall, you will fall. This has already been proven by hundreds of Christians who thought they could deal with precarious situations and then find out when it’s too late that they couldn’t.  Take the hint already.

Parting Shot: Here’s a rather amusing story I read from Reader’s Digest:

A man put out an ad for a chauffeur at a local newspaper. Three experienced drivers responded to the ad. During the screening, the man asked two of the applicants to wait outside the room, and then asked the one applicant in the room a question.

“When driving on a road near a cliff, how far away from the ledge could you drive without falling off?”

“Five inches.” Proudly declared the first applicant.

The man then asked him to go out and tell the second applicant to come in. He then asked the second applicant the same question.

“Two inches.” He answered, grinning with cockiness.

As with the first, he told the second applicant to go out and call the third applicant. The man asked the same question.

“I’d stay as far away from the ledge as possible.” said the third applicant.

He got the job.

“But I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved one is just… poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed so you’d be spared your pain.”

-Â Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), Batman Begins, 2005

After my brother died (car crash), my mom introduced me to one of her colleagues at work, a woman who was a little bit older than her. Then my mom told me about that colleague of hers, particularly her decision to be emotionally detached from her children. Why? So that she didn’t have to suffer from the intense grief as my mom (and dad) did as a result of my brother’s death.

Sounds kinda practical. Don’t let yourself get emotionally attached to anything and anyone so you’d suffer less pain if you lose them — and you will lose them. Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII had the same idea. “I don’t want friends who won’t be around tomorrow”, he said. If you don’t plan to stick around, I might as well keep you at arms length.

My mom disagrees. Yes, she hurt like hell when she lost her son. But according to her, the hurt is still worth it. She’d rather go through the painful consequences of loving than to play safe and, in the process, lead a life devoid of the joys of loving.

But you know, sometimes I’m with my mom’s colleague. And Squall.

The sting of losing someone is just not worth it.