Liv in a Life Well-Lived

Oh, I suck at travel writing. I just find myself at a loss for the exact words I should be using to describe the moment. But I will still try, to practice. And it had been after all, my first trip to Mindanao. :) July 24 Manila, at this moment, is a wet dog. Typhoon Florita is up at arms and all about Luzon. When I left for the airport this morning, I had to contend with the heavy rains, strong winds and flood. The storm wasn't bad enough to cancel flights though, thankfully. The airport was buzzing with activity. You'd think it was just a normal day if not for the airconditioning turned on low and us still slowly freezing to death inside the pre-departure area. My thick jacket was barely enough to keep me from turning to solid ice. It took us a long time to be seated, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to flee from the extreme cold. Imagine my amazement then when a fat ray of sunlight coming through my window seat flooded the airplane upon landing in Cagayan de Oro! I...

Book in Hand: Round the Fire Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle Song in Mind: I Wanna KNow What Love Is Right now, I'm in Iligan City in Misamis Oriental, a place only as as foreign as Bulacan is to me. Nothing extraordinary here, save for the fact that they have a port and they are beside the sea. It also seems fat people are a novelty here because my walking down the street is already a cause for people to watch me proceed. What? Maybe they are half expecting that I'll have a heart attack right in front of their eyes and that would be the most exciting thing that could happen in this sleepy city. Ha. Anyway, I'm starting to discover that if I do ever become desperate for a husband, I should head to the mountains or to Mindanao and I'd have a 52.45% chance to be married off. Just my inability to comprehend the Bisaya dialect is cause for the guys here to be especially protective, baka daw mabenta kami sa Intsik sa palengke. Sayang, walang gwapo. Pero kung desperado nga, dib...

I had been fortunate enough to assist in the facilitation of a training for a large cement manufacturing corporation this past week. Aside from the fact that the training place is only an hour away from my house, I also quite ejoyed the free transportation and free food. The participants were members of the community nearest their cement plant, and their classification varied, from municipal officers to simple housewives. The session which a colleague and I handled was on Stakeholder Analysis, where we asked the participants to do an exercise which we believed would emphasize the point of multi-stakeholdership. After randomly grouping the book to ensure that the officers and the commonfolks were mixed, we asked them to construct a tower out of simple materials which we would barter to them. Their currency? Items that can be found on their body. Jewelry, pants, skirt, shirts, blouses, underwear and yes, even their false teeth. Important items like cartolina and Manila paper were priced ...

wink, wink! ;)

Water. Too much of it can make you sick. Take me for example. After that blatantly incongruous birthday celebration held in Malabon, where we had to battle with the typhoon FLorita and dubious looking brackish floods within the vicinity, I landed myself a stuffed nose, bleeding raw throat from coughs and the occasional fever once every three days. Yes. A week after the big bang celebration (which turned into the big booboo), I am still sick. I keep hacking up green mucus (disgusting, I know), and talking and standing up makes me nauseated. Last night, I had a fever again. But I'm not as depressed as I ought to be because I treated my poor, sick self to a movie. And just like a druggie, I can't get enough of water. Fittingly, I watched M. Night Shymalan's Lady in the Water. Shivering from the cold and whatnot, I sat in my seat with a glazed look in my eyes. It did not lift until after the movie has ended. Yes, I have heard not so favorable reviews about this film, but my op...

1. I watched Pirates of the Carribean 2, and decided it is safe to have a crush on Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom at the same time. The movie was a little murky, but I guess the action is all there. Beats the boring Superman Returns anytime. 2. Bought 10 books over the weekend trying to think it will make me feel better. My book total has now reached 1,802 and I am becoming more convinced that my room will be the first to be blackened out if ever our house catches fire (God forbid). 3. Was happy for about five minutes when I was told by my friend that the anniversary issue of Total Woman magazine was already out last Saturday and it features my article. I mean, c'mon, this is a first for me. Published and paid for it. Sure, it was just a silly movies review, but hey, I'll take anything just to feel justified for calling myself a writer. More than the pay, it's a milestone. 4. Wrote a book review for Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and sent it to the My Favorite Book...

Recently, somebody asked me what job do I really want and what I can do. My heartfelt answer was, "I don't know!" This was seconded by my brain who said a nasty, "I don't have what it takes to be anything good; It's the attitude." The only thing that saved me from forever branding myself as a loser is this third voice which told me, "I know what I want and can do; I just have to pursue it." The dilemma is the balancing of three factors which I have to consider: passion, ability, and compensation. I used to think that I have the passion for development work and I built my ability to do so. But after three years into it, the fuel is slowly oozing out of me. I'm finding myself stranded in a sea of paperworks and projects that does not interest me. But I can hardly choose the projects assigned to me, and the choices are alike anyway. I don't see myself as an urban poor program officer either, since I'd have to be made of tougher stuff w...

to borrow from my favorite song: where is the passion when you need it the most? whatever happens to magic that's lost? if i died young would i have been happier? what have i done to make my life so much harder to swallow? unfortunately, I don't think a holiday is all I would be needing though. major life overhaul would be more like it. i feel stuck and lost and tired. overused, underpaid, overworked. people expects too much, i can't get anywhere fast enough. talk about a bad day. geez, talk about a bad year.

A forester I am not. Yesterday, I joined a tree planting activity in the mountains of La Union and did not even meet my quota of 10 seedlings. Yep, a measly 1-0 was all that was required and I barely planted 7. Barely, because the 7th seedling was probably just half submerged when I chose to save my neck instead of saving the watershed. I have no problem with digging and getting my hands dirty. It's the climbing mountainous terrains I have a problem with. Yesterday's site wasn't extremely hard, but I don't have the feet nor the confidence to go with the steep incline. I noticed that the really good mountain hikers move quickly. They don't negotiate footholds like I do ; you'd think I was discussing the probability of a peace pact with an al-Qaeda chief. I think for some five seconds, I understood how it feels to be completely useless. I stuck out in the forest like a sore thumb. I felt like a beach ball dejectedly enduring the alien presence of grass and insect...

Prozac’s secret disclosed "In a recent study , researchers from an American laboratory claim to have discovered the way in which the anti-depressant drug, Prozac functions on the brain. Prozac has been around for 18 years but this is the first time scientists have been able to explain the working of the drug. It has been common knowledge that Prozac (fluoxetine) alleviates the symptoms of depression by stimulating the growth of brain cells. But how it does this has never been known until now. Scientists from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of Long Island conducted a research that enabled them to finally understand the mechanism of the drug. The examination was carried out on mice specially bred by Grigori Enikolopov and his colleagues. " Tsk, tsk. These uncommon heroes, these unwitting victims, these mice. How many of your breed, of Mickey, have died in the name of Science? How many mothers weep, Minnie, everytime they inject viscuous fluid into those tiny, extremely furr...