Early pt 2
This blog is a boring sea of text. I need to get some pictures up here.
Anyway, may I regale you with stories from way back? You have no choice, do you?
When I was in grade school, my Mom sent me to Don Bosco Technical Institute in Makati. It was a big school, with big buildings, and a big gymnasium — and obviously, a tuition fee that could burn a big hole in a mother’s pocket.
I think she sold a kidney or two to get me there. But after the tuition there really wasn’t anything forthcoming from her. So I had to make do with the ratty equipment that came my way the start of the school year.
I’d usually start the year with a new bag — which of course would make me happy — for a few weeks, before the seams gave out and the straps snapped.
So for the rest of the year, I was stuck carrying my bag like a stuffed pig over my shoulder, carefully holding the sides so that the books wouldn’t spill over.
This, while my classmates lugged their trolleys and obviously sturdier bags up the stairs while whistling along.
This didn’t bother me when I was in 1st grade since classes were on the second floor, but it got bad during 4th grade when classes were on the fourth (or fifth, I don’t remember — and I don’t want to remember).
During recess, my classmates would break out their lunchboxes — and oh the colors and brands on them — Batman, Transformers, GI Joe — they had it made.
While they opened their boxes by snapping open two latches on the front of their lunchboxes, I only had to open one since the other was busted.
And while they had ham and egg sandwiches to eat, I had my aunt’s specialty — pandesal with butter. And by midday, obviously, the butter was gone. I used to wonder where it went, so I’d look around my lunchbox to see if it just slid out somehow.
But ha, I had my own thermos, which was daily replenished from the school fountain.
Students also had access to the school swimming pool. And I for one was not going to let that opportunity go to waste. But since I didn’t have any trunks, I swam in my briefs. Luckily, no one paid me any mind.
But the great thing was, during this time my classmates treated me as an equal. Well, I know that this is the age where kids go a-bullying, but we had none of that.
And I never thought of myself in a pitying manner. I thought I was pretty normal (I was even a little cocky). It’s only now that I realize how ill-fitted I was for that moneyed society.
Ah to be a kid again.
Strangely, I was content. I loved the spiritual cultivation there. During recess, you’d even see little 7 year olds rush over to the chapel to pray.
And there was Father Chocolate, the school rector who’d do a Santa Claus every single noon and dole out little brick chocolate bars. (Needless to say, he was a student favorite — hey, that’s a great teacher strategy there, hmmm… ).
Father Chocolate also had a Nintendo Entertainment System he’d let anyone play with, as long as it’s limited to 15 minutes per person. Cool, huh?
Still Bored
I’m doing a lot of stuff, but I’m still bored. What’s wrong with me….
Life Question
Just a question. What if somehow I lose my memory. Let’s say a car accident or a sudden crack to my noggin. And I lose every trace of who I am, who I know — that sort of stuff. Wouldn’t it be just like I had died?
In other words, what is the definition of my existence; is it the sum of my memories? Of my experiences? Of my actions? If I lose my memory (therefore in a sense losing my experience, and my awareness of my past actions), wouldn’t it be as if I were another person living parallel to that the past life?
Taking it further, sometimes I feel like the man I am right now is radically different from the man I was, lets say, 6 months ago. It’s as if that man had already died. My existence and the existence of that person 6 months ago seem to be different.
I have my tentative answers to these questions, but I think I’ll keep them to myself for now.
The best writer?
I remember an opinion page that read an obit to one of the great statesmen of the Philippines.
In reference to the recently departed, the writer said, "He was such an accomplished writer that anything he wrote sent people scrambling for their dictionaries."
I don’t think I want to be that good a writer. If everytime I wrote, people went for their dictionaries, that would make me a terrible communicator.
There was once a time when I wrote to impress. I racked my brain for as many high-falutin words as I could sensibly insert in my essays. I ended up writing terribly.
Today, I speak, or rather, write my mind. And I feel the freedom to express, without the guild of proper grammar.
And what’s important to me today is getting my message across, not getting them cross over my message.
I think I like things better this way.
Sabado
It’s the Sabbath, and I just want to greet you all a happy Sabbath! Think God the whole day, boys and girls.
Someday I’ll Teach…
This is the first in a decidedlly long series.
I hope I still have you guys when I finish.
Someday I’ll teach. I don’t have a clear-cut reason as of now, and I doubt it’ll come to me in full clarity in the near future.
What I do know is that, one day, I will participate in helping the youth be better people. I will teach, yes, I will teach. And I will recieve apples from my adoring students. Or sinkamas. Whatever the cafeteria offers.
Why? It’s the best way to leverage my skills to effect the most change in this world for God.
That was a mouthful. Let me tell you a series of stories instead.
When I was in gradeschool studying in Makati, our grade level had around 300 students divided into 7 sections. And for the sake of fairness, the teachers spread out their ‘model’ students among these sections.
I was assigned to one of them. And being the ‘pride’ of our section, I had honor to salvage - which meant I had to excel and win the most prestigious award, the gold medal for honor students.
Unfortunately, they only gave out one of them per year. It was a blustering race among the 7 sections. And no matter how hard I tried, I never got closer than 3rd place.
I think I understand why today. You see, my ‘rivals’ took this competition really seriously. They had private tutors for each subject. And if that weren’t enough, their own parents( doctors, engineers, phDs, them all ), put them to a rigorous routine and didn’t give them dessert until they got each and every question right (cue the theme to Rocky ).
I took the challenge seriously as well. So I enlisted the only help I could find. My aunties.
Now you have to understand that I was self-taught in pretty much every aspect of my academic life. I learned to write on my own. I learned my ABCs from Sesame Street (honestly!). I didn’t have supportive someone to steady my hand at ABCs.
And my aunties’ training regimen was on the cooler side of hell. If I made a mistake on a 20 point spelling test, I’d get a good whacking.
Which was put to the test when on one particular quiz they were giving, there was this one word I couldn’t spell right.
To teach me spelling, my aunts used to give me a test. They’d read out of an intermediate pad with 20 or more spelling questions, and I’d have to correctly spell what they were saying.
During one session, I was already red-eyed and weary from a whacking too many because of this one particular word I couldn’t spell. Question number 20.
[Round 1]
Spell soup.
S-O-U-P
Mali! [spank][slap][slap]
[Round 2]
Spell soup
S-O-U-P
Mali[slap][spank][spank]
Round 3
Spell soup
S-O-U-P
Mali[spank][spank][spank]
"Ano ba yan, soup lang di mo maspell?"
Weary, tired, and red all over, this 7 year-old demanded to be shown the right spelling to soup. I saw the word and was close to apoplexy.
The word was soap.
My auntie, being waray and from the visayas region, kept saying soup.
Now I was confused.
Later on, to pass time, I started drawing robots, and put fictional specifications on their weapons.
My aunt leaned over and saw me write the weapons on one of the uglier robots.
"Ano ba yan? Distroyer beam and sinulat mo. Dapat destroyer beam. Ano ka ba? Bisaya?" she said
I looked up, tired and all, and probably thought to myself, "Because of you…yes."
Why I’m a Programmer (And Why I Probably Won’t Be One For Long)
I’m a programmer. That’s my job. I slave away all day sitting on my behind, hands alternating between furious typing and eery stillness.
I don’t really know if this IS the right job for me, to be honest. There is so much I’d like to do and I don’t know if this is where I’ll excel.
Anyway, here’s the story behind my career.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor like my dad, or a physicist (all because the grown ups around me made those choices seem like the best choice; you know how impressible kids are).
Well, I can’t be a doctor because I’m reckless and I have bad short term memory( refer to the post Early pt.1 ). If ever I was to be a surgeon, I’d surely leave lots of stuff in my patients — scalpels, gauze, and maybe even a magazine or two.
Physicist? No way. Math bored me. If only I had Math teachers who knew how to make kids realize how interesting numbers are, I’d probably be a Math wiz (and so would a million other ’slow’ learners like me).
But I have always, always been in love with computers - but only because of the games. I remember locking myself in the bathroom crying a river because my mom forgot to take me to the arcade to play a few rounds of video games.
Scene.
Kid waits all day to play at the arcade. Mom forgets. Kid hides in the bathroom. Mom comes and knocks on the door. Kid opens bathroom, eyes swollen, nose runny. Mom laughs( there’s a pattern here, see Early pt.1). She obliges and takes kid to the arcade.
And there I was, confronted by flat arcade tables playing Galaga, and Pac-Man (yes, I’m a little bit older than PacMan).
When I was a little older, my brother and I loved playing PC games. Among them was the immortal Where In The World is Carmen San Diego, which, may I add, was one of the best educational games, ever. And yes, they don’t make games like they used to.
We also started programming here and there. You see, we loved Role-Playing games and we loved dreaming up exotic locals, beautiful princesses, jaw-dropping towers, the dashing runt (who, of course, suddenly discovers hidden powers and becomes the dashing knight and automatic heir to the throne while capturing the heart of the princess), wicked warlocks, and the prerequisite low-level beasts whose only purpose was to jack up the playing time by 40 hours.
So in the tradition of the classic RPGs Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Black Onyx (lolo, you have to remember that one)…we presented our RPG masterpiece…
Evil Wrath
In Tagalog, Masamang Daga
The story was about this Evil Wizard (aren’t they all?). And this evil wizard was really angry( hence the wrath part).
Well, I’d tell you more, but that’s about the beginning and end of the story. We even really seriously considered putting a rabid, menacing rat as the opening screen’s graphic. But, given our limited graphic skills, we might have pasted Mickey Mouse’s mug instead. Yeah, Mickey Mouse with fangs….
It was a very crude box-looking game that never made it past the title screen. But it was a good exercise in programming Turbo Basic.
And all throughout my highschool days, the only reason I read up turbo pascal and turbo c was because I, one day, wanted to create a gaming masterpiece. I wanted to do everything, from the script to the character design, to the music, and of course the programming. Which meant that if I did pursue that line, I’d have made really sucky games.
Today, I develop applications for a financial institution. It’s a good job and a great experience.
But look at the story above, and my current situation.
Tell me if I’m happy.
Bakit Wala Akong Website
I’ve done a website for a hospital. I’ve done a website for a yearbook. I’ve done web based applications for a school.
But I’ve never made my own website.
But fear not, intrepid believer, one shall rise from the ashes of my misery.
Early pt.1
My long-term memory is sharp as nails, but my short term is definitely zappped. I can remember a lot about the time I was two years old but I sometimes forget if I was lying down or getting up.
Allow me to demonstrate to you my mystical, amazing, and mindboggling powers of memory.
I remember quite well when I was two years old studying at a Montessori nursery school having a teacher who probably got her education degree from Attila the Hun.
There was a time when we were a little unruly (hey, I was two years old, you don’t expect toddlers to sit through an hour of ABC’s). And she — I kid you not — actually threatened to have our heads chopped off. Cue to the janitor who was working on something outside using some sharp implement. The teacher then says, "If you guys don’t straighten up, I’ll have him cut your heads off; you want that?"
Now, as a two year old kid who believed that everyone was good and that teachers wouldn’t dare lie, I believed the every word she said. The gleam in my teacher’s eye, which was probably irritation, I mistook for murderous intent.
So I tell my mom, "Mommy, I don’t want to go to that school anymore; they will cut my head."
And my mom just laughed it off.
She could have said, "Don’t worry if they cut your head, you’ll grow a new one," instead and it would have been the same thing.
Imagine how betrayed I felt. Mommy learns that her beloved son might lose his precious head if he fails to behave, and she laughs it off.
In her defense, she did move me to a different school. I probably looked better with my head after all.
A Measure of Care
"O, kamusta ka na?"
People say this to me when they haven’t seen me in a while and feel the need to make small talk. Notice how they have to append the O to sound surprised.
"Kumain ka na?"
People who are close to me say this as a prelude to lunch or dinner. After this begins an hour long debate on which restaurant dinner is to be at. We usually end up arguing two hours to decide where to eat together for thirty minutes.
Dinner is always a great way to spend time with friends.
"San ka na ngayon"
People usually ask me this when they feel the need to say something after not seeing me for a long time. Sometimes they’re excited about it, sometimes, they’re just going through the niceties. The next question is usually, "E si ganon musta na?"
"Uy ang taba mo na ngayun a"
People that haven’t seen me in a few weeks or so often say this. And I’m often tempted to tell them to say the same thing to the person they see in the mirror. Or I straighten up and suck in my belly. Whichever comes first.
"Uy Chee"
For some reason this is really one of my favorite things to hear. Someone calling my name means that I’m special and known personally.
"Ingat ka"
Saying this involves making yourself a little more vulnerable for some reason. It really warms the cackles of my heart when I hear this.
"You’ve matured"
Euphemism for "you’re old, wrinkly, and leather-faced." Next time I hear this, someone’s going to wake up in a hospital. 
":D"
I pass by many people and we sometimes just exchange smiles. They don’t know me by name, and I don’t know them personally either. We’re all just too shy to get on speaking terms. So whenever I’m with friends and I get to exchange smiles with these people, my friends often ask,"Sino un," I usually reply "Ewan, ikaw kilala mo?"
"I’ll be praying for you, Chee"
If you ask about my health, I’ll be touched. But if you tell me that you’re praying for me, I’ll be more than that. Being concerned about my health is something I appreciate, but being concerned about my spiritual health tells me that you’re concern for me goes beyond the temporal. I don’t think there can be any agape without this.
So for all of you who have been praying for me…thank you.
And to those who aren’t-it’s not too late
