early next year

after my 1:1 this morning, my boss told me i should plan my trip for W03-04 (jan 12-26) next year since apparently we are going to have another face-to-face for project CR. this is good news, a good way to start 2008 except that this is also how i started 2007 and this year has been a roller coaster ride. i remain positive though that this trip is a forebearer of good news, scratch that, great news. my additional side (the clandestine ones) meetings are lined up for the next couple of weeks. one at dinner on tuesday and another during monday week after next. its the monday meeting i need to really make good of because that is what i'm very interested in. the sort of dinner meeting on tuesday is also quite interesting so we'll see how that pans out.

the exodus of friends out of the big blue is really disheartening - a couple of folks from the other building have declined their offers. maybe its wrong to make friends at work, cause when they leave, its always hard to start making friends again. how do you make friends with folks from a different generation? it used to be that going to the office was something to look forward to - not because of the work but because hanging out with friends was relaxing and fun. now i go with a heavy heart. its really time for a change in scenery - and hopefully mine is around the corner.

well-wishers

i received a comment on a prayer to St Joseph i posted in my blogger (which links to my multiply) last june when i asked for prayers for my sister while she was in the hospital. the comment was signed anonymously (let's call him/her "A") but A mentioned he/she has been praying the novena for the past month and reading the post about my sister mentioned he/she will include her in his/her prayers. A, whoever you are, thank you for thinking of my sister. When my sister was in the hospital a few months ago, i prayed the novena daily and the rosary to help my sister get better. God has been really good and my sister has been doing really well after a month-long stay at the hospital. She has gained weight (as did I) over the past months and i am very thankful to the Lord that He has been there for us. Her condition is something that she will have to live with for the rest of her life, the symptoms comes and goes but she has mostly been well.

i rediscovered the need and the comfort that prayer brings during these trying times. i wouldn't say i've lost my faith but i think life in the fast lane sort of got the better of us. maybe this was God's way of bringing me/us back and while i have maintained my rosary vigil (i try daily with occasional lapses), there are still some more i feel i need to do. prayer works - if you sometimes feel He has not answered, God has His reasons. but i must tell you that the prayers alone provided comfort. God is really good - all the time.

lazy day sunday

there's nothing better than a relaxing weekend - read : eat, sleep, watch tv. i stayed home the whole day today to rest following a tiring saturday night (dinner and get together). despite driving the distance, i was glad to come because my nephew had a great time playing with josh last night. i guess lying in bed most of the day can take its toll, my back kind of hurts right now. the gloomy clouds do little to get me to try going to the mall. i'm already late for my christmas shopping much like the previous years. i really need a change in lifestyle - not only because its making me downright chubby but because i am feeling sluggish (ha!). there's something about sunday's closing thats depressing. maybe its the realization that the weekend is going to be over and its another week of working that makes me feel a lot of people feel this way. or maybe its just the feeling when you've run out of passion for what you do. next week is a short workweek though and that's reason enough to rejoice.

december starts next week. christmas is really just around the corner.

realizing the truth

as i talked to friends last night, i realized how true it was what they say that "we all want what we don't have." finding the answer to a previous post that honestly has been on my head for the past few days seemed coincidental - except that i don't believe in coincidences. i realized that while we waste time wishing we were somebody else, that life could be better, that we had more money, that we are more popular --- that elsewhere, somebody else would trade places with us in a heartbeat. case in point, friend A who is a celebrity in his own right and who drives fancy cars and hefty prize winnings told us that sometimes he'd wish he could be an engineer like us. It just goes to show that in the grander scheme of things, each of us has a role to play. we may not all be actors, models nor equally rich, famous but we all have our own purpose. and maybe if we look more closely at ourselves in the mirror, we'll realize that what we wanted all along has always been staring right back at us.

what we want in this life

being jolted into responsibility makes you re-evaluate your life in general and ponder how much adjustment you have to make to a lifestyle you have grown accustomed to. i look at my friends sometimes and feel a pang of guilt being envious about their financial freedom, or their blossoming love life, and at times their seeming trouble-free existence. what do i really want in this life? is it fame and popularity? having the means to afford ridiculous luxuries? unparalleled success and being looked up to? or a strong & loving relationship. will having any of these make me happy or a better person?

maybe an occasional feeling of envy for what others have can help someone aspire for the better things in life, maybe not. maybe the key to real happiness is keeping your expectations real - and be grateful that whats yours is yours. having the faith and trust that things happen for a reason and God, in this eternal goodness, has His reasons. i think what is most important is that having a job, being able to put food on the table, having a roof and being able to send my nephew to a good school is solace enough.

another round of high school

we agreed to have lunch yesterday over friday afternoon and instead of eastwood i thought it was a good idea to take leo and biboy to sonya's garden instead. i found out none of them have been to sonya's garden before so the change with the usual food fare i thought would be welcome. we met around 10am and braved the highway traffic toward tagaytay along the way laughing so hard on how silly we looked back in high school courtesy of our yearbook i brought for the trip. its funny how much we could make fun of ourselves - how we looked back then sans the x number of pounds we've piled up 16 years after. the "i wouldn't be caught dead wearing that" fashion in style during that time seemed "que horror" in our eyes today. i have to say its nice to get in touch with the past from time to time - not trying to live in it, but just reminisce how much different life was back then. i'm happy to be able to see some of my high school classmates - at least those who would mutually be happy to see me as well. there are "friends" and there are "friendly." we wondered how many of them look today, what kind of lives they're living sixteen long years after high school. it reminded us of "romy & michelle's high school reunion" at least the idea of it and not because we weren't popular. it would be great if a whole bunch of them was in friendster and you could just search for them but at 33, i bet not a lot of them would take the time to open an account. i know some of them are so it would be pretty interesting to check them out.

sonya's garden is always a treat - great lunch, healthy pig-out meal. i REALLY need to hit the gym, christmas is upon us and christmas means get togethers, unending dinner invites, a surplus of sweets which equal fat, fat and more fat. sigh. we took some pictures after lunch and decided to hang out at bag of beans right after. it was another round of desserts at bag of beans where biboy kept saying i should have all of the ice cream from the apple pie a la mode only to find him finishing spoon after spoon of it. the pretend-dieting doesn't really work hahahaha. we listened to so many old OPM songs driving back that i thought my ears were going to bleed. there were a lot of interesting conversations you won't have with any of your other friends and it was really fun hanging out with them.

i was dead tired when i got home - legs & back aching like crazy. i heaved a sigh of relief when ali texted that the gimik for the night is not pushing through. despite being exhausted, i only managed to doze up close to midnight and was up six hours after. why can't i ever get myself to sleep for eight or nine hours straight?

food for thought

i realized how difficult it must be for stay-at-home moms to plan a meal plan for an entire week. i should know because we've been growing tired of the traditional filipino dishes we've been cooking lately. while its not a case of "we've cooked everything filipino imaginable" we've run out of the easy-to-cook recipes. its only a matter of time before you get tired of eating sinigang, nilaga, tinola, barbecue, paksiw, pata, menudo, caldereta, etc etc ... we always get stumped at the grocery wondering what we should cook for the next week. ugh, who would have thought this can be this hard?

its probably a great time to pursue my hidden passion for cooking, i told myself after mba, i should start pursuing my other interests - culinary, photography, learning a new language, post-processing. i should make an effort rather than wait for things to settle down - with the way life is, things never settle down. maybe i should just wait for this year to be over and then i can start with a priority list (i wanted to say plan, but i said before - i don't want to make long-term plans anymore) for 2008. hopefully, 2008 will usher in the changes which i am so determinedly pursuing this last quarter.

high school memories

leo, a schoolmate from high school, is in town again after settling in the US many years back. friends visiting has always been a reason to pool together friends into a "you can't get out" get-together. i wasn't expecting to see either ron or troy at dinner last night (Cyma forever!) but i was happy to see them after a long time. along with biboy & leo, we reminisced like always, about high school and how it was one of the best years of our lives. both troy and ron are married - troy with two going three kids this december and ron, after years of trying finally has a 3-year old daughter. we realized how much older we are that night - ron & troy both looking like daddies while biboy, leo and myself seemed so much younger (this is a fact!). we all have different lives today - troy is with accenture, ron still with sunlife, leo is a structural engineer in new york and biboy is famous for his bowling prowess. in different ways, we are all successful in what we've ventured into and though we all probably have varying degrees of success - all seemed happy - me included.

sixteen years after high school, its hard to remember names and people. we talked about the teachers back in high school, our CAT adventures, riding the train on a whim, walking long distances going home during the rains, including our out-of-town gimiks. high school was a time of just enjoying - at least for most of us. i think when you're still a teenager, you sort of get a free pass to not think of anything except when you're next gimik is. no money problems, no family dilemmas or relationship dramas. it was really easy being happy back then.

one thing troy, ron and i agreed on over dinner is how tired we were from the hustle and bustle of working. maybe at this age, you really start feeling this way - almost twelve years of working already feels like a lifetime. is this what mid-life crisis is all about? shouldn't this happen much later, probably when we're at our 40's (insert cringe here!). Gee, the thought of saying "Hi, i'm 40yo!" is mortifying - am i like those who dread the thought of aging? I hope they find the fountain of youth soon. i pray though that whatever it is we all are searching for, that we find it soon.

amidst the changes

i met ali and trixy last night for coffee at starbuck's in santana grove (probably going to be a regular here) and just like old times, we didn't realize it was already half-past 1 and the store was closing already. amidst the flurry of happy conversations, life sharings and weekend musings i realized how much each of us has changed from the time we first met. i was finally convinced to watch "the pursuit of happyness" since both said it was a good film when it came up in one of our conversations. after all, i did catch a portion of the shooting of this film when i was in san francisco. here are some realizations :

• how cost conscious i've become since becoming the breadwinner for the family. i felt guilty spending P230 for iced mocha and banoffee. it wasn't even because i could not afford it - just felt like i could have fed two people a hearty meal from that same amount.
• seeing "the pursuit of happyness" made me appreciate how blessed i am to not have had to endure what chris (will smith) had to go through to make it. to be thankful to have a job that provides for a family of six without having to live from paycheck to paycheck. God has been extremely generous.
• how nice it is to have great friends - how great it is to be able to be there for them when they need you and them there when you need them. where you feel you belong and you are not there just because you are in the same circle of people. how good it feels to receive an occasional text message or call just to catch up.

last night, we talked about how life can truly suck sometimes - how bad it can be and how heavy the cross can weigh. how we all have problems, we have our own insecurities and our shame. how we carry our problems is a true measure of our character. its hard to be positive all the time. its hard not to cry when life jerks you around. i can get lost in the myriad of problems - but like they say, there's bound to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

what it feels like to be in love

read this from trixy's blogpost from the movie "stardust." while i haven't seen the movie yet, now i have this nagging feeling that i should see it soon if not to just hear the monologue below which in its entirety summarizes what it feels like to be in love.

"You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable.

All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful.

So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you.

Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine. "

assurance

one of the best things in life is having friends.while i tend to be reserved most of the times, i am quite chatty keeping friends updated with the "what's going on" happenings of my life. it just feels nice to have someone share the good news with or to share the burden with - a sounding board in more ways. what is great about it that i draw strength from their encouragement, from their reassuring words and this helps alleviate any reservations, any fear - big or small that i may have. despite being self-assured most days, there are times when i feel less confident of my abilities.i am hoping and praying for the best as things continue to unfold. as windows continue to open. as each day brings hope. God has been really good. Family has been my inspiration. Friends have been encouraging. What i know for certain is that I'll never walk alone.

jordin sparks |

you'll never walk alone

assurance

one of the best things in life is having friends.

while i tend to be reserved most of the times, i am quite chatty keeping friends updated with the "what's going on" happenings of my life. it just feels nice to have someone share the good news with or to share the burden with - a sounding board in more ways. what is great about it that i draw strength from their encouragement, from their reassuring words and this helps alleviate any reservations, any fear - big or small that i may have. despite being self-assured most days, there are times when i feel less confident of my abilities.

i am hoping and praying for the best as things continue to unfold. as windows continue to open. as each day brings hope. God has been really good. Family has been my inspiration. Friends have been encouraging. What i know for certain is that I'll never walk alone.

dearly departed

we did our yearly trek to the busy makati south cemetery mid-morning to pay our respects to our dearly departed. being a public cemetery, it was its usual busy self abuzz with people who wants to remember their loved ones. you have to hand it to the filipino and their strong ties with tradition - that despite the 4-day weekend beginning to day, a lot still prefer to go on november 1 to pay their respects. its difficult for us to pay our respects all in a single day since our dearly departed have been laid to rest in different cemeteries - la loma, manila memorial and makati south cemetery. i'll probably swing by manila memorial in the next couple of days instead.

death - the only certain thing in life. i wonder if when the time comes, i will be prepared to come face to face with my maker. to honor the people who have passed on, i'll write what i remember about them here in this space.

evangeline sison. she was mother to my cousins who i never got the chance to meet because she passed away before i was even born. its hard to imagine how difficult it would have been for my cousins growing up without their mother.

carina sison. carina was my cousin who passed away at a very young age. i don't remember exactly but she must have been between 8 to 10 years old. i was very young then - probably just a bit older than her but i remember she got sick back then. one of the things i remember was that after she passed away, her family had to move their door because it was directly aligned to the front gate. people believed the superstition that the doors should not go straight to the gate because this somehow invited death.

dad. mom's father we fondly called "dad" and my uncle, aunts and mom tells me that dad took care of me growing up. its been such a long time since he passed away that its hard to remember now. what i remember was that he used to pick us up at our house during all saint's day so we can pay our respects to our loved ones at manila memorial. dad suffered from cirhossis of the liver - i remember how painful it was for him back when he was in the hospital. when i got the call at home that dad passed away, there were sampaguita flowers scattered near the telephone which was a bit unusual. maybe it was just coincidence.

mang. after dad passed away, mang (mom's mother) gave us ten great years of family reunions. she was the tie that bound everyone together. mang was in the hospital for a bit and i was there in the ICU when she breathed her last. i don't know how my mom and her brothers made the decision for a DNR (do not resuscitate) - how hard it must have been to make that choice for someone you love so much. i miss grandma.

lolo. we called daddy's father "lolo" which was tagalog for "grandfather." lolo was a very nice and generous man. i remember growing up in mandaluyong that we'd always run up to him and ask for some change and he'd readily give us whatever he could spare. we were not that close to our relatives on the father side but lolo was the one we liked a lot. lolo passed away ahead of "mang" but what i remember from his passing is the funeral preparations - seeing lolo taken from his house, driving around manila making arrangements out of his memorial plan, and seeing him at the morgue. lolo was well loved and everyone of his relatives that i met had only great words to say about him.

abet. abet isn't a relative. we didn't even grow up together and i didn't even know him not until he was an intern for the big blue. he rode with me to the office most of the two years that i've known him and we got to talk about a lot of things. abet was funny and serious in balance and i could never get rid of him -- kasi nga sabay kami pumapasok at umuuwi. i don't know until now exactly what he died of - all i know is that abet went ahead at a very young age of 25. we were all heartbroken when he passed away but the pain of his loss felt easier to bear as the days went by.

writing this made me realize how great a childhood i had, having the privilege of growing up with my grandparents. i hope wherever they are right now that they are happy and at peace. i hope abet is at peace. i really believe in my heart they are in a better place - and one day for sure, i will see them again.