1st exam passed

I passed my first WCE exam!!! Markman done!  yahoo!
thanks to my friendships for the prayers & the encouragement.

words to live by ...

got this from iam ... i dunno who the woman is but she imparts great wisdom with the words below.

Maya Angelou said this:

• "I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow."
• "I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."
• "I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life."
• "I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as "making a life."
• "I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance."
• "I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back."
• "I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision."
• "I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one."
• "I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back."
• "I've learned that I still have a lot to learn."
• "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

black sheep

i guess the universal truth is that there are no perfect families. each family has their own crosses to bear, their own black sheeps. i talked about my younger brother in a previous blog before and i need to talk about it again in light of what happened last night.

my brother is our black sheep. he blames everybody else for him not having a job right now except himself. he feels slighted when my mom nags him about how lazy he is. i cannot even begin to describe to you how lazy he is - tang'na (pardon the expletive) kakain sa kwarto, di man lang ilabas yung mga pinagkainan nya hanggang mga 3 o 4 na plato na ang naiipon. he'll bring out the plates pag sinipag and then still thinks yata na may maid kami to wash those freakin' dishes. he quits his previous jobs kasi 'mahirap daw' --- hello? he got his last severance pay from his last job and then magpapa-inom dun sa mga kapitbahay namin --- mayaman no? he watches tv and leaves it on kahit natutulog na, leaves the lights on --- hello, kahit piso hindi sya nag-co-contribute sa mga household bills and kahit pagsabihan mo, its like speaking to a wall. He's that fucking dense and he's 28yo.

last night, he was in his usual drunken state arguing with my mom because of her nagging. he kept on repeating and repeating his imagined slights and was verbally abusing my mom. i couldn't stand it any longer so that i went out and joined the arguments. the conversations got heated and he was challenging me to a fight. i stayed cool the first time but the next time i went out, my nephew was already crying. he challenged me again and this time, i took one of the wooden posts of my bed and i was really going to whup his sorry ass with it if my mom & sister didn't intervene. i swear, i was going to use it if he hurt my mom or my nephew physically. talo talo na lang ... don't tell me i couldn't do it, because i can.

i will say it here ... i hate my brother. i don't wish him bad or anything, but the world will be a better place without people like him. i really can't take it anymore so i'm considering moving out. that boy is not going to move out of that house anyway, he can have it but i am not staying. di rin naman kayang palayasin yan ng mom ko, so better for me to leave. i don't plan to talk to him anymore. call me whatever you want pero i've reached the point where i really can't take it anymore.

i am moving out ... soon!

torn between a habit and a dream ....

Close to You (from www.abs-cbn.com/close2u/story.aspx) is abount Manuel (John Lloyd) and Marian (Bea) have been best friends since they were kids. They are so close that they know each other's secrets ... well, almost. For the last 16 years, Manuel never had the courage to tell Marian how much he loves her.

On the other hand, Marian sees Manuel as no more than her best friend. Marian's greatest love has always been Lance (Sam), a classmate who protected her from bullies back in grade school. Ever since Lance and his family migrated abroad ten years ago, Marian never had the chance to establish contact with him again. The only thing that Marian knows is that Lance has become the lead singer of the new rock band, Orion.

Good fortune smiles on Marian when Orion decides to tour the Philippines. Marian is intent on seeing Lance again, and she brings Manuel with her on a chase that brings them around the Philippines and abroad. Manuel believes that the whole chase is futile because a popular star like Lance will not remember a simple girl like Marian, but Marian does not believe him.

When Lance and Marian finally meet again, sparks fly between them. Marian now has to decide - will he let his best friend be happy with her Prince Charming, or will he fight for the love that has kept him alive for the last 16 years?

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i watched this film with a couple of my MBA friends, eric and annie yesterday. i was really excited to see this film because i knew it was going to be a treat. Bea and John Lloyd's movies has always been food for the heart. I actually quite enjoyed movies both or one of them were in - now that i have you, my first romance and dreamboy. bea alonzo is has grown up quite nicely. she is very very pretty. john lloyd does not disappoint, amazingly charming, funny and superb acting talent. sam, for his part, was handsome, oozing with sex appeal and a killer smile to die for.

the moviehouse was packed. there were really funny moments in the film, told subtly that if you aren't really pinoy, you wouldn't really get it. there were tearjerker moments specially during the car scene when manuel was telling marian about his feelings and telling her he's giving her time to sort out her feelings. it probably shouldn't have come from marian's younger sister but when she told marian she's torn between a habit (re:manuel) and a dream (re:lance), that was an excellent metaphor. the real i-will-always-remember line though was said near the end of the film when marian realized manuel reall loved her and she said "mahal mo ko talaga." to which manuel replied "and i have my whole life to show it." awwwww ..... ok, so i'm a sucker for romance. i'm just is. i believe in true love, in love at first sight, in soulmates and happy ever after. see, i guess i can be real jaded at times but deep inside, i still see the world in color.

so i did see this film among other romance-themed pinoy movies - call me baduy but i enjoyed it. i guess seeing films themed like this helps me remember that there is real love in the world. that it happens and that one day, i'd wake up to find it happening ... to me!

brokeback mountain

this is a review of brokeback mountain that trixy sent me. i don't know who wrote it but i have to give him/her credit for a very well written and unbiased outlook on the movie. brokeback mountain is one of my favorite films of all time. the story is really moving and just made me realized what a romantic fool i am. it's kinda long but its a worthy read.

Brokeback Mountain—the highly praised new movie as well as the short story by Annie Proulx on which the picture is faithfully based—is a tale about two homosexual men. Two gay men. To some people it will seem strange to say this; to some other people, it will seem strange to have to say it. Strange to say it, because the story is, as everyone now knows, about two young Wyoming ranch hands who fall in love as teenagers in 1963 and continue their tortured affair, furtively, over the next twenty years. And as everyone also knows, when most people hear the words "two homosexual men" or "gay," the image that comes to mind is not likely to be one of rugged young cowboys who shoot elk and ride broncos for fun.

Two homosexual men: it is strange to have to say it just now because the distinct emphasis of so much that has been said about the movie—in commercial advertising as well as in the adulatory reviews—has been that the story told in Brokeback Mountain is not, in fact, a gay story, but a sweeping romantic epic with "universal" appeal. The lengths to which reviewers from all over the country, representing publications of various ideological shadings, have gone in order to diminish the specifically gay element is striking, as a random sampling of the reviews collected on the film's official Web site makes clear. The Wall Street Journal's critic asserted that "love stories come and go, but this one stays with you—not because both lovers are men, but because their story is so full of life and longing, and true romance." The Los Angeles Times declared the film to be a deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart just as so many mainstream films have before it. The two lovers here just happen to be men.

Indeed, a month after the movie's release most of the reviews were resisting, indignantly, the popular tendency to refer to it as "the gay cowboy movie." "It is much more than that glib description implies," the critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune sniffed. "This is a human story." This particular rhetorical emphasis figures prominently in the advertising for the film, which in quoting such passages reflects the producer's understandable desire that Brokeback Mountain not be seen as something for a "niche" market but as a story with broad appeal, whatever the particulars of its time, place, and personalities. (The words "gay" and "homosexual" are never used of the film's two main characters in the forty-nine-page press kit distributed by the filmmakers to critics.) "One movie is connecting with the heart of America," one of the current print ad campaigns declares; the ad shows the star Heath Ledger, without his costar, grinning in a cowboy hat. A television ad that ran immediately after the Golden Globe awards a few weeks ago showed clips of the male leads embracing their wives, but not each other.

The reluctance to be explicit about the film's themes and content was evident at the Golden Globes, where the film took the major awards—for best movie drama, best director, and best screenplay. When a short montage of clips from the film was screened, it was described as "a story of monumental conflict"; later, the actor reading the names of nominees for best actor in a movie drama described Heath Ledger's character as "a cowboy caught up in a complicated love." After Ang Lee received the award he was quoted as saying, "This is a universal story. I just wanted to make a love story."

Because I am as admiring as almost everyone else of the film's many excellences, it seems to me necessary to counter this special emphasis in the way the film is being promoted and received. For to see Brokeback Mountain as a love story, or even as a film about universal human emotions, is to misconstrue it very seriously—and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement.

Both narratively and visually, Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy about the specifically gay phenomenon of the "closet"—about the disastrous emotional and moral consequences of erotic self-repression and of the social intolerance that first causes and then exacerbates it. What love story there is occurs early on in the film, and briefly: a summer's idyll herding sheep on a Wyoming mountain, during which two lonely youths, taciturn Ennis and high-spirited Jack, fall into bed, and then in love, with each other. The sole visual representation of their happiness in love is a single brief shot of the two shirtless youths horsing around in the grass. That shot is eerily—and significantly—silent, voiceless: it turns out that what we are seeing is what the boys' boss is seeing through his binoculars as he spies on them.

After that—because their love for each other can't be fitted into the lives they think they must lead—misery pursues and finally destroys the two men and everyone with whom they come in contact with the relentless thoroughness you associate with Greek tragedy. By the end of the drama, indeed, whole families have been laid waste. Ennis's marriage to a conventional, sweet-natured girl disintegrates, savaging her simple illusions and spoiling the home life of his two daughters; Jack's nervy young wife, Lureen, devolves into a brittle shrew, her increasingly elaborate and artificial hairstyles serving as a visual marker of the ever-growing mendacity that underlies the couple's relationship. Even an appealing young waitress, with whom Ennis after his divorce has a flirtation (an episode much amplified from a bare mention in the original story), is made miserable by her brief contact with a man who is as enigmatic to himself as he is to her. If Jack and Ennis are tainted, it's not because they're gay, but because they pretend not to be; it's the lie that poisons everyone they touch.

As for Jack and Ennis themselves, the brief and infrequent vacations that they are able to take together as the years pass—"fishing trips" on which, as Ennis's wife points out, still choking on her bitterness years after their marriage fails, no fish were ever caught— are haunted, increasingly, by the specter of the happier life they might have had, had they been able to live together. Their final vacation together (before Jack is beaten to death in what is clearly represented, in a flashback, as a roadside gay-bashing incident) is poisoned by mutual recriminations. "I wish I knew how to quit you," the now nearly middle-aged Jack tearfully cries out, humiliated by years of having to seek sexual solace in the arms of Mexican hustlers. "It's because of you that I'm like this—nothing, nobody," the dirt-poor Ennis sobs as he collapses in the dust. What Ennis means, of course, is that he's "nothing" because loving Jack has forced him to be aware of real passion that has no outlet, aware of a sexual nature that he cannot ignore but which neither his background nor his circumstances have equipped him to make part of his life. Again and again over the years, he rebuffs Jack's offers to try living together and running "a little cow and calf operation" somewhere, hobbled by his inability even to imagine what a life of happiness might look like.

One reason he can't bring himself to envision such a life with his lover is a grisly childhood memory, presented in flashback, of being taken at the age of eight by his father to see the body of a gay rancher who'd been tortured and beaten to death—a scene that prefigures the scene of Jack's death. This explicit reference to childhood trauma suggests another, quite powerful, reason why Brokeback must be seen as a specifically gay tragedy. In another review that decried the use of the term "gay cowboy movie" ("a cruel simplification"), the Chicago Sun-Times's critic, Roger Ebert, wrote with ostensible compassion about the dilemma of Jack and Ennis, declaring that "their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups—any 'forbidden' love." This is well-meaning but seriously misguided. The tragedy of heterosexual lovers from different religious or ethnic groups is, essentially, a social tragedy; as we watch it unfold, we are meant to be outraged by the irrationality of social strictures that prevent the two from loving each other, strictures that the lovers themselves may legitimately rail against and despise.

But those lovers, however star-crossed, never despise themselves. As Brokeback makes so eloquently clear, the tragedy of gay lovers like Ennis and Jack is only secondarily a social tragedy. Their tragedy, which starts well before the lovers ever meet, is primarily a psychological tragedy, a tragedy of psyches scarred from the very first stirrings of an erotic desire which the world around them—beginning in earliest childhood, in the bosom of their families, as Ennis's grim flashback is meant to remind us—represents as unhealthy, hateful, and deadly. Romeo and Juliet (and we) may hate the outside world, the Capulets and Montagues, may hate Verona; but because they learn to hate homosexuality so early on, young people with homosexual impulses more often than not grow up hating themselves: they believe that there's something wrong with themselves long before they can understand that there's something wrong with society. This is the truth that Heath Ledger, who plays Ennis, clearly understands—"Fear was instilled in him at an early age, and so the way he loved disgusted him," the actor has said—and that is so brilliantly conveyed by his deservedly acclaimed performance. On screen, Ennis's self-repression and self-loathing are given startling physical form: the awkward, almost hobbled quality of his gait, the constricted gestures, the way in which he barely opens his mouth when he talks all speak eloquently of a man who is tormented simply by being in his own body—by being himself.


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So much, at any rate, for the movie being a love story like any other, even a tragic one. To their great credit, the makers of Brokeback Mountain—the writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, the director Ang Lee—seem, despite the official rhetoric, to have been aware that they were making a movie specifically about the closet. The themes of repression, containment, the emptiness of unrealized lives—all ending in the "nothingness" to which Ennis achingly refers—are consistently expressed in the film, appropriately enough, by the use of space; given the film's homoerotic themes, this device is particularly meaningful. The two lovers are only happy in the wide, unfenced outdoors, where exuberant shots of enormous skies and vast landscapes suggest, tellingly, that what the men feel for each other is "natural." By contrast, whenever we see Jack and Ennis indoors, in the scenes that show the failure of their domestic and social lives, they look cramped and claustrophobic. (Ennis in particular is often seen in reflection, in various mirrors: a figure confined in a tiny frame.) There's a sequence in which we see Ennis in Wyoming, and then Jack in Texas, anxiously preparing for one of their "fishing trips," and both men, as they pack for their trip—Ennis nearly leaves behind his fishing tackle, the unused and increasingly unpersuasive prop for the fiction he tells his wife each time he goes away with Jack— pace back and forth in their respective houses like caged animals.

The climax of these visual contrasts is also the emotional climax of the film, which takes place in two consecutive scenes, both of which prominently feature closets—literal closets. In the first, a grief-stricken Ennis, now in his late thirties, visits Jack's childhood home, where in the tiny closet of Jack's almost bare room he discovers two shirts—his and Jack's, the clothes they'd worn during their summer on Brokeback Mountain—one of which Jack has sentimentally encased in the other. (At the end of that summer, Ennis had thought he'd lost the shirt; only now do we realize that Jack had stolen it for this purpose.) The image —which is taken directly from Proulx's story—of the two shirts hidden in the closet, preserved in an embrace which the men who wore them could never fully enjoy, stands as the poignant visual symbol of the story's tragedy. Made aware too late of how greatly he was loved, of the extent of his loss, Ennis stands in the tiny windowless space, caressing the shirts and weeping wordlessly.

In the scene that follows, another misplaced piece of clothing leads to a similar scene of tragic realization. Now middle-aged and living alone in a battered, sparsely furnished trailer (a setting with which Proulx's story begins, the tale itself unfolding as a long flashback), Ennis receives a visit from his grown daughter, who announces that she's engaged to be married. "Does he love you?" the blighted father protectively demands, as if realizing too late that this is all that matters. After the girl leaves, Ennis realizes she's left her sweater behind, and when he opens his little closet door to store it there, we see that he's hung the two shirts from their first summer, one still wearing the other, on the inside of the closet door, below a tattered postcard of Brokeback Mountain. Just as we see this, the camera pulls back to allow us a slightly wider view, which reveals a little window next to the closet, a rectangular frame that affords a glimpse of a field of yellow flowers and the mountains and sky. The juxtaposition of the two spaces—the cramped and airless closet, the window with its unlimited vistas beyond—efficiently but wrenchingly suggests the man's tragedy: the life he has lived, the life that might have been. His eyes filling with tears, Ennis looks at his closet and says, "Jack, I swear..."; but he never completes his sentence, as he never completed his life.


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One of the most tortured, but by no means untypical, attempts to suggest that the tragic heroes of Brokeback Mountain aren't "really" gay appeared in, of all places, the San Francisco Chronicle, where the critic Mick LaSalle argued that the film is about two men who are in love, and it makes no sense. It makes no sense in terms of who they are, where they are, how they live and how they see themselves. It makes no sense in terms of what they do for a living or how they would probably vote in a national election....

The situation carries a lot of emotional power, largely because it's so specific and yet undefined. The two guys—cowboys—are in love with each other, but we don't ever quite know if they're in love with each other because they're gay, or if they're gay because they're in love with each other. It's possible that if these fellows had never met, one or both would have gone through life straight.

The statement suggests what's wrong with so much of the criticism of the film, however well-meaning it is. It seems clear by now that Brokeback has received the attention it's been getting, from critics and audiences alike, partly because it seems on its surface to make normal what many people think of as gay experience— bringing it into the familiar "heart of America." (Had this been the story of, say, the love between two closeted interior decorators living in New York City in the 1970s, you suspect that there wouldn't be full-page ads in the major papers trumpeting its "universal" themes.) But the fact that this film's main characters look like cowboys doesn't make them, or their story, any less gay. Criticisms like LaSalle's, and those of the many other critics trying to persuade you that Brokeback isn't "really" gay, that Jack and Ennis's love "makes no sense" because they're Wyoming ranch hands who are likely to vote Republican, only work if you believe that being gay means having a certain look, or lifestyle (urban, say), or politics; that it's anything other than the bare fact of being erotically attached primarily to members of your own sex.

Indeed, the point that gay people have been trying to make for years—a point that Brokeback could be making now, if so many of its vocal admirers would listen to what it's saying—is that there's no such thing as a typi-cal gay person, a strangely different-seeming person with whom Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar have nothing in common—thankfully, you can't help feeling, in the eyes of many commentators. (It is surely significant that the film's only major departure from Proulx's story are two scenes clearly meant to underscore Jack's and Ennis's bona fides as macho American men: one in which Jack successfully challenges his boorish father-in-law at a Thanksgiving celebration, and another in which Ennis punches a couple of biker goons at a July Fourth picnic—a scene that culminates with the image of Ennis standing tall against a skyscape of exploding fireworks.)

The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they're not really homosexual—that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people"—you're pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed.

a different kind of getaway

we went to clark air base over the weekend to get a looksie of the hot air balloons and also do some partying on the side. we decided to drive friday night and squeeze into raf's house in pampanga. the drive was surprisingly easy - not a whole lot of traffic going to the shell station at the north luzon expressway. jowell drove ate mel's car while raf & myself drove our cars. there were 10 of us : iam, jason, dj, van, jowell, ali, me, mel, trixy and raf. ice & ria couldn't make it cause my godson jakob was still under the weather.

friday night was pretty tiring. jowell, van, ali & trixy were unusually in high spirits. partly maybe because of the caffeine they had at starbucks after dinner. me, because of the revicon i-on trixy gave me and the venti-sized cafe mocha i had back at the medical city. short to say, we didn't get a chance to get a really good night sleep cause we were tossing and turning and laughing hard that night. if laughter could kill, i think we would have already been dead by now. van accidentally locked the bathroom door which raf didn't really have a key to so i had to show them my ala-alias abilities using an expired plastic card.

fast forward to saturday morning where we woke up pretty early to get to the balloon launch site. it was pretty early and the weather was bitingly cold. we patiently waited for the hot air balloons while we started to take amazing pictures of the slowly brightening sky. the balloon launch was not really disappointing, it was actually pretty cool watching them inflate them and see them soaring in the sky. there were a lot of people and they were all busy shooting pictures as the balloons rose to the sky one or two at a time.

we decided to wear out intel "leap ahead" shirts to this event because we wanted to take some leap ahead action sequences for our video. here, we managed to explore the continuous shooting mode of our cameras. mahusay. we decided to ride the octopus and g-force amusement rides and honestly, i thought i was back in high school again.

the place where we stayed "villa alfredo" was quite nice. there were a also some folks checked in but it wasn't really packed. everyone loved the karaoke machine - leave it to jowell, dj, van and trixy to hug the mike. me, i'm not much of a karaoke singer. i only sing for myself - its just not my thing. i love to listen to them though. we did the tequila and the beer that night but i retired to bed early because i wasn't able to catch a lot of zzzzz's from friday to saturday afternoon. i was feeling dizzy around 11 to 1130ish so there was no point in trying to stay up.

sunday morning was quite nice. we left the resort before noon and had some belly-filling lunch at jollibee. we dropped by this private residential community "the lakeshore" where we took some really nice pics with the man-made lake, lighthouse and with the nice foliage as background. i think we had like 300+ pictures all in all for this trip. that's not even counting the hours of videos we took.

i hope everyone had fun that weekend. if they didn't, well i can't help them with that. basta ako, i plan to make this summer a really happy one.

quandary

i can't wait for this week to be over. i really hated this week - there were just so many things that i want to forget, so many new realizations that i have to face and decisions that will affect my future. i think whatever decision i make will have its own consequences, its own pains and i'm not quite sure what to do right now.

my sleep patterns were royally screwed up this week, i was so exhausted. last week when i visited abet, i was the only one there (and the other people were a few hundred yards away), the wind was blowing, the sky was overcast ... it was one of the most peaceful moments of my life. I wish things today didn't have to be so complicated. Ayoko talaga ng complications. I always wanted a simple, practical way of living. Yung tipong, if i want to go out, e di go out; if i want to eat somewhere, e di eat there. La masyado ka-OA'yan.

do you think its right to classify friendships? kasi i always thought there was only one definition of friendship pero i was wrong. iba-iba pala ang level nya and i realized that people do disappoint you. there is really wisdom in the old adage "be careful who you give your heart to" dahil if you are not careful, you can get your heart broken. i used to think friendship is something you give freely, parang libre lang yan kaya sige lang. If you do this, you can make the mistake in investing in a one-sided friendship. You should also try not to make assumptions. Those sweet gestures may be sweet nothings, and if you're stupid enough to put meaning to it, you'd mistake it for someone who cares. if someone does something good for you, take it as it is, don't add color. Doesn't mean there's friendship there. You should distinguish between the real one's kasi yung real friends are people who you can always talk to, who despite the good & the bad, accepts you. These are the people worth keeping kasi you can tell them about yourself and they will be there through thick & thin. I ask myself how ever did i become so jaded? and i know why, because i've seen it and i've felt it, and i am never going to make that same mistake again. Jaded. Jaded. Jaded.

i feel a strong wind coming. its going to bring lots of changes. i'm going to have to make a choice soon and its going to be a difficult one. i'm going to have to let go of the pretentious because they are not tethering me right where i want to go. i am at the crossroad, and when i choose my path, i am not going to look back. i am not going to be encumbered by these past encounters. there's so much more to see, and so many more deserving people to meet and i am not going to sell myself short.

today, i know na who the real friends are.

life's like that ...

so i'm trying to focus now to be able to do this simple addition to the template the factories need to submit while listening to expose belt out 'the same love.' and i am getting nowhere, so i decided to take a break and read my friends' blogs and i realized something, that there are a lot of things & events happening around me. the world is truly spinning and our lives move along with it.

its funny how we can be so self-absorbed sometimes. i guess why would you want to dabble at other people's lives when your life is complicated as is. well, sometimes you can't just help it cause its human nature for us to find solace in other people, in friends, family or loved ones, whoever we are comfortable with. the fact is we do face problems of our own, and sometimes we think they are too much for us, that the insurmountable seems to break us, and we turn to people who can lend some good advice. i think about how many times i've had to mumble like a broken record about things that we have discussed again and again. same old story - when will we learn to stop the shit and move on with our lives?

i was texting an old friend a few days ago and we talked about his growing attachment to his officemate who was married. i asked him "why do we do this? why do we keep doing it knowing it will only lead to heartbreak?" i think he just gave a short "i know." to my question and i knew right then that soon i will be getting more sentimental text message, more chats tinge with sadness. yet again, another broken heart.

i don't think unrequited love is the saddest thing in the world. i think its great to fall in love with another person, even if that person remain clueless about how you feel. I think loving someone is true testament enough that we are capable of caring for somebody else, not just ourselves. the only downside here is that people who love others who cannot love them back suffer in silence. their heart breaks and no one hears their cries at night. yes, i've had my share of the grieving.

we all wear masks to hide our pain. behind the smile and the laughter, hides part of our grieving soul.

what happens next

i had a 1:1 with my boss this morning and towards the end of our discussion, he gave me 1 good and 1 not-so good news. let's talk about the not-so good news. carl said that my 6-month reloc is in limbo right now cause there's strong focus in keeping budget tight in 2006 and that there's probably little chance of my relocation being approved. bummer! sabi ko na nga ba, no deal is a closed deal until you start processing your papers. The eternal optimist in me is happy cause (1) i get to hang out with my friends this summer - boracay, vigan, palawan; (2) i get to play probably in the whole volleyball tournament; and (3) spend my birthday here. So far may plan B naman and plan C ako. While Plan B is more solid, Plan C is a work in progress. Plan B is AO. That option is still open and its still a reloc for two years. Arnoldo confirmed that its going to be open end of this quarter. The only problem Arnoldo sees here is if Joan will release me. Ahhh, complications. Plan C is to check what's up outside these walls. I wish something happens with plan C, but i learned early on not to put too much hope on things so i don't get disappointed. So there ... maybe the US thing is not really for me at this time. I must learn to read the signs better.

the good news carl shared was that in the recent r&r, i am in the top cloud so hopefully i get a hefty increase this coming focal. if i get anything between 20-25%, i will be very happy. here's hoping. if he promotes me, libre ko yung mga close friendships ko.

i wish i knew how to quit you.

straight talk

i guess in the grand scheme of things, straight people and non-straight people can never really mix completely. Its like trying to stir oil and water, and that no matter how hard you try there's just no bond between them. i guess it will always be an uphill battle hanging out with straight people because for most of them, they can never really accept people like me for who or what i am. please don't start bringing in religion and telling me that i am going straight to hell because i believe in a God that is accepting, that no matter who or what you are, loves you unconditionally. There are few people who gets me, who really see me for who i am and accepts me for both the good and the bad.

yung friends ko tell me how can i meet someone if i'm always hanging out with straight kids. in a way, they're absolutely right. you can talk about sex, porn, relationships of the straight kind but its still taboo to talk about gay stuff. i'm sure some will cringe at the thought of discussing brokeback mountain or transamerica, or the movie eating out and latter days. they won't see it for what it really is - the reality of life. the reality that people do fall in love in different ways and that friendships can transcend beyond gender and sexual preference.

tama si trixy, there are people that are really fun to hang out with. pero if you hang out with them, treat them like they're really good friends, it doesn't guarantee that they'd treat you back the same way. the key talaga i think is to not let yourself get too close to people, so that when its time to let go, there's very few people and things to look back on. those who truly were meant to be lifelong friends will be there - whether you see them once or twice a year, you will know that when you meet up and talk, its like you were just talking about yesterday.

maybe i'm just really feeling jaded today or maybe this is something i have been putting off for a long time - accepting the sad realities for what it is. Know that the people who can accept me are the real friends, and all others are mere acquiantances.

Right now, i wish for things to get better. That something good happens - cause i really need to hear some good news.

happy birthday

today is abet's birthday. he would have been 28 today had he not left us three years ago. i wanted to write something senti cause it gets emotional whenever i remember him pero today is a cause for celebration, so wala masyado drama dapat.

abet is one of the lucky one's. this is something i truly believe in and i envy him for him. he's really finally home. he's with our Savior and knowing that thought makes me happy for him. sabi nga nila di ba that death is the only thing certain in this world ... and taxes. so sometime, when the time is right, when He calls on us home, magkikita kita din tayo ulit. reunion 'yon sigurado.

abet rode with me to work for two years. we talked about a lot of stuff, from the mundane to the really serious stuff. i guess i was the more talkative one but he was a patient listener. he talked about promising to not gain weight before his US assignment and then looking unimaginably big when he got back. we always joked about how much my car was unbalanced to his side whenever we drove to work.

abet is lucky because he found lifelong friends in jowell and bene. i think people who find their real friends are the lucky ones because they know they will be there for them when they need them. sometimes though i wonder if the friendships built in the office are the lifelong kind of friendships or the kind lang na you enjoy hanging out with. is it the kind of friendship that loses its luster when one moves out of intel? sana hindi no? there are friendships at the office i would like to keep, some more than the others.

so if abet was with us today, what do you think would happen in the office today? for sure, we'll start the day with long e-mail chain greeting him happy birthday. next, people will make hirit na magpakain naman sya dyan. at 3pm, there will be the never-ending-if-i-eat-one-more-plate-i-will-be-an-immortal pancit (pampahaba daw ng buhay e) + ice cream (addicted ako sa coffee crumble). then for sure, mag-de-date sila ni arlene after work hahahaha predictable no?

Happy birthday Abet!

best e-mail received today

The best gift anyone can give me is a planner. I like planners because I am a planner. I like thinking ahead. I like being prepared. I get a high from being on top of things. But some things are beyond planning. And life doesn't always turn out as planned.

You don't plan for a broken heart. You don't plan for a failed marriage. You don't plan for an adulterous husband. You don't plan for an autistic child. You don't plan for spinsterhood. You don't plan for a lump inyour breast.

You plan to be young forever. You plan to climb the corporate ladder. You plan to be rich and powerful. You plan to be acclaimed and successful. You plan to conquer the universe. You plan to fall in love - and be loved forever.

You don't plan to be sad. You don't plan to be hurt. You don't plan to be broke. You don't plan to be betrayed. You don't plan to be alone in this world.

You plan to be happy. You don't plan to be shattered.

Sometimes if you work hard enough, you can get what you want. But most times, what you want and what you get are two different things. We,mortals, plan. But so does God in the heavens.

Sometimes, it is difficult to understand God's plans especially when His plans are not in consonance with ours. Often, when God sends us crisis,we turn to Him in anger. True, we cannot choose the cross that God wishes us to carry but we can carry that cross with courage, knowing that God will never abandon us nor send something we cannot cope with.

Sometimes, God breaks our spirit to save our soul. Sometimes, He breaks our heart to make us whole. Sometimes, God sends us pain so we can be stronger. Sometimes, God sends us failure so we can be humble. Sometimes God sends us illness so we can take better care of ourselves. Sometimes, God takes everything away from us so we can learn the value of everything He gave us.

Make plans but understand that we live by God's grace. Growing up we get dismayed by the realization that we could not get everything we want. Growing old, I am delighted by the realization that although I can't have everything I want, I can want everything I have.