huh?

there are words, and there are WORDS. i can't believe i have just encountered too many of the latter, all in one reading. i'm on a ____ overload.

1. anarchistic communism
2. innocuous
3. liberal multiculturalism
4. multiculturalist
5. jouissance
6. Pluralism
7. historical materialism
8. point de capiton
9. capitonnage
10. monopoly capitalists
11. Thatcherism
12. neoliberalism
13. denigration
14. ego-ideal
15. National Socialist

whew... i do think writers should soon learn to compromise and give balance between polysyllabic and understandable. anything less borders on pedantic.

better late than never

happy birthday, chammy!

since late man, dapat duha ka pictures...

happy birthday, leapling!

bittersweet

from tuesday's healing mass presided by msgr. cris garcia held at the carmelite's monastery chapel with the relics of st. therese of the child jesus:

"Your sickness is your healing."

wet summer?

or so pag-asa warns. not that i have little confidence in this country's weather bureau, but whatever... sunshine or no sunshine, summer, here i come!

glorious mornings and delightful evenings in siquijor

chasing winds and waves in guiuan, eastern samar


people-watching and paraw sailing in boracay


late jacuzzi nights in bohol


snorkeling and kayaking in palawan


playing golf (as if!) and sunbathing at the mactan shangri-la


jumping on a speedboat to the camiguin sandbar


carpe diem!

guilt

last saturday, my mother and i embarked on a two-hour trip to lugo, a sleepy (as in!) northern town, to visit her doctor-friend for some professional advise and more catching up. we arrived late enough to find almost a dozen of his patients lining up at the clinic, most of them from far-flung barangays, and others even had to cross mountains and rivers (no kidding!) just to get there, we later learned. we got the chance to talk to a bubbly mother in her forties who, together with her husband and daughter, descended from the hills of neighboring town, bogo. apparently some unidentified object got caught in the little girl's eye, bothering her no end, thus prompting them to seek medical help to finally get rid of it at once. we were talking about other sickness and disease and how people should not let it get the better of them since we all have the same chance of dying the next minute, either by some terminal illness, or by getting hit by a speeding bus. brilliant. in the course of our conversation, the mother revealed that she, too, has a rather huge lump in her left shoulder to which my mother was quick to advise that she should just have included that in today's consultation, saving them another trip. she can't, since according to her, "200 ra man gud among budget, kuhaan pa sa 100 nga bayad sa doctor, unya plete... sige lang, mobalik ra unya ko ug maka tigom na sad." i had four or five 100-peso bills with me that time, but the fear of her feeling insulted overcame me. really, 200 pesos may just be pang-taxi for some, but for the marginalized many, especially those in the countryside, it could spell the difference between life and death. and now that i think of it, i could only ask, wherever was my sense of charity, the christian "whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me" value? whatever happened to the UP "giving back to the people what you owe them?" her painful confession irreparably broke my heart and made me so guilty, i don't know when or if i could get over this shame, self-reproach ever. if it's any consolation, i hope my daily prayers could somehow ease their burden and lighten up my conscience.

nanie

i practically spent the whole day just chatting about anything with nanie, in between browsing through pep, femalenetwork, abs-cbnnews, cnn, and time. wasting company resources!

at the end of the day, we resolved to soon have pictures of some of our body parts photoshop-ed and made into one wet, sexy fhm centerfold. her legs, my boobs, and... we haven't agreed whose face, maybe gly's.