After the Flood

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." - Albert Camus


It has been weeks already after the typhoons hit the Philippines and left us with a high death toll and billions of pesos worth of damages. I don't pay much attention to the injury the floods caused us, my interest is on our gain - what we Filipinos got from this catastrophe.

By doing so, I have seen how this tragedy became a catalyst for unity and change. Yes, change. While we all know how we Filipinos are when it comes to helping our neighbors, I know of no other country who has this much spirit when it comes to rebuilding what was destroyed. When this nation is in trouble, all men and institutions (big and small) find their way to provide aide right away. I have no doubt that in a small amount of time, everything will be back on track again. However, this event will be the perfect means for change and a good avenue for awareness.

It is but human nature to find someone to blame when disaster strikes. But I strongly disagree with some groups wanting to prosecute water dam operators and local government units of flood striken cities. Let's face it, nobody wanted this to happen, most especially those who were directly involved and affected. And guess whose sector is most affected by what happened? Dam Operators and local government officials of the affected areas! I don't think it's morally right.

What I think is morally wrong though, in what happened, is the loss of the lives of those who went their way to save others. When I heard about the death of this military man who risked his life to save twenty before dying, I was mad - mad to find out that when they went to save other people, they entrusted their own lives to a rope... ONLY to a ROPE! Where the hell is our military fund??? I bet our National Defense fund would be worth Billions and we could not afford a decent life-saving equipment??? How ironic! There we were before watching that million peso ad of the Department of National Defense played during Manny Pacquiao's fight with Hatton telling us how to prepare when there's a calamity! The Department tells us how to be ready and yet they're not! Where were the rubber boats? Where were the cords stronger than the rope that dead soldier used?

On top of that, our Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) is not ready too. Instead of FORECASTING they were "NOW-CASTING" due to the lack of equipment to prepare everyone for what was coming. In 1998 the institute has laid out an action plan with new equipment requisition. But instead of providing them with these equipment - which includes Doppler Radar which estimates rainfall, wind intensity and tracks storms, the government only raised their salaries and supplies. Let's face it, our country, being tropical, is so used to having typhoons. I remember hearing about typhoon Ondoy coming to hit us days before it did and nothing, totally nothing, prepared us to the amount of rainfall it brought (which is greater than Hurricane Katrina's).

Above all, what the majority of people is missing here is the fact that WE are all culprits of everything. The events were just mere blows due to climate change and to think, we were supposed to be fortunate to have been given years to prepare before the typhoons happened. I remember watching The Inconvenient Truth, a movie about Global Warming, back in 2006. And even then, our neighboring nations would experience catastrophic natural calamities brought about by this phenomenon and I don't think anyone took notice of that considering what came about.

I am quite certain that this will definitely bring change to the country. After all, failure is not in the falling down but in the staying down. But whatever that change would be I know it may not totally prevent something like this to happen again, but I would be very hopeful that it will save more lives this time.

A Fresh Start

I have always loved writing. To me, having a blog was just for leisure, a way to breathe out all the stress in this world. I wrote a lot, posted a few and now I'm thinking, having been blessed with a great home-based job now, I know I would have more time for this past time of mine.

Everything that's happening to me now is a fresh start. Family, marriage, spirituality and work. I am very grateful that I have stumbled upon a job that has it all - great pay, perfect schedule and best of all, I never have to leave the house. Are these good enough reasons to ditch my once day job? Hell yeah!

Imagine not needing to put on make-up early in the morning and dress up in formal clothing with high heels everyday. Then I don't have to stay in the office late for unpaid overtime and worry about the pressure of sales for all departments even as you sleep. No more office politics to juggle with having too many bosses with different attitudes and company objectives in mind, everything now is virtual and very professional. To top it all, I don't need to be away for out-of-town trips and bear with Management Committee meetings for hours (this one time, our Business Plan meeting went on for 15hours straight). I could be just right here, in our home, the place where I should be when the kids go to school and when they come home after a day's class, I would be here to cook dinner for them. And while I do all that, I don't have to worry about my brain being stuck up (that's what we all women say when we argue why we choose to work instead of being a plain housewife, that we don't want our brains to lose its edge). This job gives me all the challenges I need to keep my mind going. I'd have time on Saturdays to do house chores, check on my kids' assignments and do more stuff and even enough time to go to church every Sunday.

A fresh start. A new chapter. This means new entries too for this blog. All those political views, stream of prose and nonsense thoughts buckled up in my head will now find their way to be posted. So today, I pondered. Cheers.

Have You Ever? What Then?

"He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lives a great street-sweeper who did his job well.'" -- Martin Luther King Jr.

Have you ever wondered what happened to your classmate in grade school who sang very much like Lea Salonga? Or have you ever tried flipping pages of your old yearbooks back in pre-school asking yourself if John the bully ever became the doctor he said he wanted to be? Have you salvaged your old high school paper of your graduation and reckoned if your valedictorian now has a Ph.D. degree in Biology? But perhaps we need not to look that far. Have we ever asked ourselves, did we become the person we once dreamed of becoming back as a child?

Well I have.

My yearbook in pre-school says I wanted to become a doctor someday to help save the sick and the poor. Only to find out that growing up I was never good at Biology and I often get scared of blood. Poof! There goes my ambition.

But that was just about my first dream. My second and stronger desire came in when I was finishing Grade school until early in my high school years. I wanted to become a journalist writing for a respectable publication. It was a long shot I told myself but not at all impossible. Besides, I know I have the skills. After all I was competing in writing competitions, national press cons and debates at that time. And as I finish my secondary education, this dream escalated to wanting to become the next Jessica Soho. I wanted to become a broadcaster. And back then when I was feeling all nationalistic, I envision myself fighting off bad apples in the government and advocating about human rights. Armed with that I became confident, ready even, to embrace this aspiration.

But then again I failed to realize that being a real journalist isn’t just about knowing grammar and memorizing the Journalist Creed but about being passionate, just, hardworking, responsible and brave. These are things you never learn academically. And these things never happen overnight. Reality is, even if I did come from a very good university, I won’t appear on camera the next day. You toil first into being an assistant or researcher for years before appearing on television. And even before you start as an employee, you need to face first the very stressful screening process of examinations and interviews. Add to that, you are competing against dozens of other hopefuls. These are people with the same dream as yours, who are also from reputable universities and some are even with cum laude tags on their resumes. And the best part of all is that there are only two positions open for all of you.

And so to cut the story short, I never became the broadcast journalist I once dreamed of becoming, I gave it up. Instead, I am now working for a car dealership of a well-known brand also hit by the global recession. I still write a few articles, a good stress–reliever for me, and post them here even if everyone else does it, even the ones who cuts and pastes someone else’s original write–ups, just to earn money through online adsense, kind of lucrative actually.

Now that I am working full-time as manager, I came to realize that even my day to day task is still about dreaming, though in management trainings we now call it vision - to envision an end and work on the means. The same is true in real life, we idealize on having a good living – nice house, stable job, happy family, quite easy to do actually, as easy as dreaming to be a doctor in Kindergarten, but the ways of achieving them is not at all simple.

We only have one life to live, and how we live it all starts with how we dream (visualize) ourselves to be. But more importantly, since we are the architects of our lives and all are conspired based on our experience, wants and needs, we can ask, who do we sell our brains to? That’s why in this world we live in we have jails for criminals (hopefully with a pack of corrupt officials being the worst of them) and monuments for heroes and saints. Our dreams dictate what role we want to play in society. And these roles, no matter how small or big, are what mold our humanity.

My grade school classmate who had that wonderful voice like Lea Salonga didn’t become a singer, although I’ve seen her before competing in singing contests on TV. I heard she went on to become a nurse. John the bully inherited their family’s business and became an entrepreneur. And our high school valedictorian hasn’t earned her Ph.D. yet and I don't think she ever would.

As for me, I dreamed to be a journalist and I’m selling my brain now to Chinese businessmen to sell cars. Though this blog allows me to be the so-called writer/journalist I wanted to be.

Finally, like me, you may have dreamed of being this somebody when you were young and turned out to be someone else. There’s always time – time to finally ask myself, what could have happened if I did get that journalism job at first…

What could have been if we all pushed on with dreaming and worked to achieve it? What then happens to society when all roles are played with passion and with zeal? When brains are sold according to innocent and simple wants? What then.

THEN TWILIGHT CAME TO NUMB AND TAKE YOU IN

My friend in the mirror, this one's yours...

What's so amazing about this life is the wonder of waking up each morning, thinking ahead as to how your day would go and eventually be robbed of your amusement at the end of the day. The question blissfully starts with "What should I do?" and haplessly ends with "What have I done?".


But no matter how painful you look back at the perplexity of the situation, you can never hide the confoundness in you. And the more you shun your deliberate act, the more it will haunt you with the ones involved. It will overshadow you until such time you can no longer breathe and die with it.


You are now through with living in the past. You are now on your quest to speculate on the one constant thing we have in existence - change. Is it unfair to ask someone for tomorrow when the only thing of value to him is yesterday? Perhaps. But only fools would be daring enough to ask that.


The hell in living in solitude when at stake is your indifference. Unless he starts to truly value your worth then you'd rather live this life alone but in profoundness.


People don't die with the memory of what they have done in their past, but pass away with the remembrance of what they have done before they expire. True enough that history is meant to be remembered, but no history was ever conceived without a present and a future. Hence, you would rather have your subsistence worthwhile today and tomorrow. For just like any other yesterday, they would also pass.


Tomorrow, you shall no longer start your day with asking questions and be baffled but rather start it in waiting. Until that twilight, that state which separates your day with your night, would come to numb and take you in.


Until you no longer feel...

Until you no longer think...

Until you no longer ask...

Until you no longer live.

Pakikipanig sa Kaluluwa

Sarili ang kaniig sa bawat panahong nagnanasa ng katipan
Ang panahon ng paghanap sa anuman ay lalong kawalan
Ninanamnam ang apdo, latigong sa katawa'y pumipilipit
Ngunit sapat na ang sarili upang makapalitang hinga at init

Sarili ang kasuyo tuwing hinahangad abutin ang kasukdulan
Pawis ay patuloy ang patak ka-ritmo ng ulan
Hinahagkan bawat saglit ng lubusang pag-iisa
Kasama ang sariling sarili at wala nang iba

Sarili ang kahingahan, sarili ang kalapit
Sarili ang kaisa, sarili ang kapalit
Sarili ang kaulayaw, sarili ang kasandig
Sarili ang kasayaw, sarili ang kapintig

Sarili ang pag-iral at sarili ang pagtatapos
Sa pagmulat ay sarili, sa sarili'y pagraos