nothing...really, there's nothing

i can't organize my thoughts and can't get my mind to write something specific...i have been travelling a lot that's why words and rest are so scarce...i just got back last weekend and im leaving again this weekend....vacation?...i wish it were, but it's not...it's work.

will try to tell you about my trip when i get back....and i will also try to write while in the hotel

wish i could watch the Pacquiao-Larrios fight on Sunday, but i'm afraid i won't be able to

dream, believe....survive

at some point in our lives we discover that there is more to just existing...we realize that we want to be someone else, someone who would touch lives and make a difference...somebody who would create an impact and be remembered for the contributions you have made...

at some point we will fail and be ridiculed and criticized for being ambitious.

don't let them discourage you....don't allow them to suck out that ambition from you...and don't let them take the dream away from you.... possessing such a strong dream comes with the power to turn it into reality.

life isn't perfect

life could be a never-ending search for perfection....this i learned

sometime ago i discovered that no matter how hard we try to make things better for us, we at times fall flat on our faces with failure riding our backs....we just have to learn that life isn't perfect...i have learned to stop looking for perfection, and the moment i did, i have learned that what i have with me is the closest thing to it.

we that are young and restless

i went to a children’s party sometime ago together with some of my batchmates from high school... it was Roy’s daughter’s first birthday and baptismal affair and everybody was just excited to be there.

you will never realize how much you have grown older and wiser until you see children of your once high school friends playing around and calling you “tito” or “tita”....i have long accepted the truth that one day when we look at the mirror, that we will see our black hair turning to gray, that our once-unblemished foreheads would show lines, not unlike the ones we saw from our parents’ foreheads... but no one told me that this reality will hit you when you least expect it.

we were a bunch of thirty-somethings at a table with an open bottle of wine, and a feast-like array of different food variety, most attractive of which is the roasted cow. and though the music had gone stale and people have retired for the evening, these thirthy-somethings still have the energy displayed only by people half our age... everybody felt young. i guess, that’s natural when you are in the company of people your same age. that mood went on until somebody teasingly stated that we’re not young anymore, that we’re nearing the age where sunglasses and receding hairlines are a common thing. i couldn’t help but feel a bit older than i should sitting beside someone who was once my kaeskwela in high school... i’m not that old, i told myself.

“well, you’re old enough,” my mind said. and at the sound of the beep, everyone had a good, yet politely restrained, laugh.

our laughters and some bouts of nostalgic moments and trips down memory lane were breaths of fresh-air to say the least, and that had probably saved us from adult talk on work, life, love and the greater cosmos...instead, we were delightfully informed on who eats at Bubble Gang Restaurant by Arlene who has showbiz-connections (thanks to her comedic tirades) and how the chinovelas are taking the homes by storm. we would have talked about high-school and prom dates, first kisses and slow dances, and played “truth or consequence?”, only maybe nobody started it.

we were all getting old... and save for the young lady who now had her balloons poking Rolien’s neck, we were all too happy to admit it.

and as she giggled her way through our anecdotes on love and life, while having some balloon–bursting frenzy by herself, i envied her – maybe we all did – for nothing but her youth... i was seated amongst friends, some of my closest, who had suffered through broken hearts, separations, lost loves and the mandatory bout with drugs and alcohol.... but she didn’t know that, she didn’t know any of that.

but we’re all older now... a moment older than we had been a moment ago, weighed down by the years that demarcated our youth and our impending maturity. and so we live sanitized by our own age, restrained by our adulterated sense of the world and inhibited by the belief that we’ve outgrown the more delinquent years of our life.

they say that age is a number, and youth is a state of mind... and in the mornings when i wake to find myself a day older than yesterday, i wish myself younger.... i wish myself to the years when i would live without fear and love without care.... to the years when high-school was the final frontier, and i did not know of such grown up words like: career, cost and commitment.

then again, maybe it really is all that simple.... and as my friends and i laughed amongst ourselves that evening – minus the wine in our glasses and the cigarettes on their lips – we were all children again.... happily teasing each other, damning the world for its rationale and competence. we are old.... but we have grown wiser with our youthful thinking. makes me wonder: would Heaven be a place where everything is totally different yet feels "just like the old days" of childhood bliss and child-like wonder?

so here’s to growing older, and staying young.

a happy and deadly virus

i have cold and from what i know this is a virus that we get from different sources....if i'd be given a chance to make a virus out of anything in this world, i'd make "happiness" a very contagious disease that could be contracted even by indirect contact with an infected person

this way, we get to infect people with the "happiness" that we have....and at the end of the day we would have had several "happy" people contaminated and exposed to this deadly virus

now, who needs antidotes?

long weekend is great

a long weekend, that's exactly what i need....

it's Independence Day on Monday, June 12 and believe it or not, i have been looking forward to this day not because of the nationalistic and patriotic symbolism it brings, but the holiday it brings on that day....

i've been out almost every week on 3-5 day trips the whole month of May and it is starting to take its toll on me physically...i've not had a good weekend rest following those trips and this long weekend excites me to the heavens

i am planning to slip away from the world the whole day tomorrow, shutting off all creatures around me and just be living in my dreams in a land far, far away from the world of tupsy-turvy called work...in short, i'll be sleeping the whole day tomorrow.

sunday is going to be exciting as friends will come over the house for dinner....as expected, we're gonna be spending hours chatting and eating, and we're gonna have a wonderful time together.

then monday....hmm....wow! this is doubly exciting....it will be Monday and i have nothing planned out...i love long weekends.

i am blessed

no matter how good life is there will always be bad and difficult times...it is inevitable

whenever we go through these, we think about how unsuccessful we are and how things would not have been the same if we had chosen to do things differently....

but i am a believer of the philosophy that we are not where we are for nothing, that everything happened because of a purpose....we are where we are for a reason.... at some point in our lives we made mistakes...big mistakes....we made choices that changed our life completely, but even the smallest decisions we made contributed to where and what we are right now.

this philosophy makes life even easier because there is no room for regrets..... my life isn't perfect. i've made some decisions i will never be proud of.....i've committed mistakes that only hell and death can be called justice....i've done things that were totally separated from the normalcy of life....but all of these missteps and "lapses in judgement" i've made contributed to my being now.....whatever i am today is a result of what i was before.

now i have learned to live life to the fullest....i have chosen not to live in the past with regrets and appreciate everything i have around me right now

and when i begin to think about it....i am not lucky, i am blessed

why the blog name?

because i am one....i took a personality test once and the result told me i am a Sanguine.

Sanguine is actually a personality displayed by people with that temperament....the others are Melancholic, Choleric and Phlegmatic....traits of which do not fit my personality orientation.

a Saguine is off swinging on a star, bringing moonbeams home in a jar.... a Sanguine loves the fairy tales of life and wants to live happily ever after.... the typical Sanguine is emotional and demontrative, and makes work into fun, and loves to be with people....he sees excitement in each experience and repeat the flavor of each occassion in colorful description...he is outgoing and optimistic.

i am all these plus more...thus, the blog name.

but whatever your temperament is, be it sanguine, melancholic, choleric, or phlegmatic,... always remember that there is only one you....and that each one of us is unique.

i'm a nature lover

i took these pictures while i was up in Ifugao for a missions trip two week ago.....man, i love nature....and the Banawe rice terraces is awesome!!! Talk about God's creation.

it's rain time

last saturday night it rained so hard i thought i could never get home... i did get home but not without difficulty. i was in our church in Mandaluyong rehearsing for Sunday's service when it rained. mind you, our church building is huge and well-roofed but even from the inside you could hear the sound of the rain hitting every nook and corner of the building.

going home was a challenge. i normally take edsa then would turn right past White Plains going to Temple Drive then left to Katipunan. because of the heavy rains the lower portion of Katipunan flyover just before going up was flooded and i (well, not me but my car) had to wade through the flood not once but twice.....the other one was along Marcos highway in front of Kingsville.... took me almost two hours to get home

what's worse was that there was brownout.... never had electricity till around 2am sunday. i don't know what's with me during that time because even if it rained so hard my body temperature didn't cool down...couldn't go to sleep until the lights were back and the airconditioner was turned on.

i thought about the days when as a child i would enjoy the time when there would be brownouts..when my older brother would play his guitar and we would sing familiar songs...when my sister and i would play the shadows game in front of the candle....when my parents would cook popcorn and would pull out coke from inside our refrigerator so we could have some food while telling stories....

well, it's not the same anymore... now not a lot of people enjoy brownout the same way i enjoyed it ages ago.... when there's brownout, then there's no DVD player.... when there's brownout, then there's no Internet.....when there's brownout, then there's no cable TV.... seems like there's nothing more to enjoy when the lights are out.

what a change technology has done to us.....

but what am i talking about? ... i was talking about rain... it's rainy season so i guess we have to look forward(?) to more floods and more traffic jams

death as i see it

I have never seen so many deaths in all my life than in the last two months. Let me qualify that…. It's not like there were more deaths in the last two months than there were in the past….it is just that, I have never been to so many funeral parlors in all my life than in the last two months, grieving and sympathizing with relatives and friends alike.

I was with friends who lost fathers, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers. I was with relatives who lost husbands, wives and children. Some were young….some were old. In the middle of all these, I have seen different reactions and different responses from those who were directly affected by the loss. One friend who lost his grandmother told me his granny has served her time well and has now received her well-deserved rest. Another told me his father had been sick and had been bed-ridden for the longest time…and so is better off dead than alive but suffering. One parent was so devastated seeing her son inside the casket, telling me that children are supposed to burry their parents and not the other way around.

Then, it hit me….. all of us will go through this…. one way or the other….. either, we will experience loss…. or… others will grieve because they lost us.

I have often wondered how long a man should live his life here on earth…. should it be more than 50?, 65?, 70?, 85?..... how about those who died as young parents leaving little children behind…or how about those who died while still pursuing college education…. or those who died without even reaching teenage years? Is death a numbers game?

A colleague's father died recently at the age of 96. He had been sick but was still able to talk sensibly to his children and grandchildren. My friend told me his father's desire was to bring all his children together, who for years have been separated by long-time rifts and quarrels. He said it was his father's last purpose on earth before God would finally take him home. His father did not see it happen. Failed purpose? Definitely not….because during the wake, everyone in the family had asked forgiveness from everybody and what was once a broken-family is now a renewed and bonded pieces brought about by the death of the father. He did not see his purpose happen in his lifetime but his death served as the purpose for something beautiful to be born.

So it doesn't matter how long or how short we all live, what matters is how purposeful we have lived our life.

Now, I have the answer to my question….. A man's life is only as long or as short as the fulfillment of his purpose here on earth.

You might ask me….what is my purpose in life and how long do I think I should live? A friend inspired me with these answers.

As a man, long enough to discover my full potential and fulfill it to the pleasure of my God.

As a husband, long enough to stick around with the same woman whom I married in my youth, till "the mirror tells us we're older".

As a father, long enough to release my "arrows", see them hit their marks and, Lord willing, see them fire their own.

And as a servant of God, I suppose I would be satisfied to live life long enough to see the good seeds I scattered in His Name yield a full harvest, or at least, the beginnings of it.

So who is afraid of death?

my initial attempt to blog

it has always fascinated me to read other people's blogs and i've always wondered how they're able to write things so spontaneously and yet so interesting....they said blogging is very addicting... this, i still have to prove myself. i've always dreamed of writing about anything under the sun.. of putting on paper (in this case, on screen) the things that are inside my head. but i always find it hard to commit myself in doing this in a consistent manner....this time, i am deciding (?) to make a run for this and make this loooong-term commitment on my part.

well, finally i got my chance...here's to a happy and productive blogging!!! Welcome, myself... to the world of blogging. Yey!!!!