Daluyong ng dagat ay tatawirin natin!

When newsman Ted Failon was reporting on Saturday on what happened to Leyte when Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda roared through last weekend, he found it hard to define in Tagalog what a storm surge was. Naturally (since I am a lover of words), I just had to find out what it is.

It's daluyong.

source

source

The word brought to mind the old song "Iisang Bangka" by The Dawn, and I thought it was totally appropriate for the times.



And I love the words.

Kay dilim at kay ginaw sa kalawakan ng dagat
Ubod lakas kung humiyaw ang galit na hanging habagat
Ngunit buo ang puso mo'ng ang daluyong ay susugurin
Magkasama tayong katahimika'y hahanapin

Ating liliparin, may harang mang sibat
Ating tatawirin, daluyong ng dagat
Basta't kasama mo ako, iisang bangka tayo
Anuman ang mithiin ay makakamtan natin

Iisang bangka tayo, Pilipinas! Kaya natin ito! Please share this song to everybody!

Letter However

Dear Myself,

I’m glad that your experience in love made you a better and a stronger person. These are what the trials are for, anyway. In many failed relationships, separation comes as the inevitable choice but moving on always proves to be as twice as difficult as letting go. Sometimes, the end of a relationship is imposed on us, but our choice to hold on is always beyond the control of circumstance. Letting go is a decision that can never be dictated on us. It is a resolve we make ourselves.

Many, however, remain and hold on to the empty promise of a memory–a past that is gone forever and vows that may never be fulfilled. We choose to live in the shadow of someone we still love, someone who only used to love us. We refuse to turn the pages of our lives so we can relish the beautiful memories we’ve had. Yes, there is closure, but not of the past but of the heart. We will never grow with bitterness and wishful yearning. Life can move on only if we open our hearts and give ourselves a chance to find love again.

Acceptance is the key to a new beginning and time is the healer of old wounds. Even if the storm casts its fearful shadow, there will always be light after our darkest and loneliest moments. There is always hope for those who believe. There is always a chance for those who try. And remember, there will always be a life even after losing love. That life may even be better than before. For all our pain and suffering come with a purpose. They are meant not to discourage us but to make us stronger and better persons.

I’m happy for you. You have learned the true meaning of closure and have stood firm on not looking back. If someone out there is crying over a relationship that has gone sour, never lose faith because losing someone we love may not be a loss at all but a blessing because someone even more deserving is yet to come.


Love,
Marela

That Old Feeling

The best part of being in love with someone is in being convinced that that person would be with us forever. Most of us start our relationships believing in the promise of love without end. Unfortunately, not all relationships end the way we want them to.

To some, love comes in a fleeting moment and goes away just as fast. But the problem is, getting over the feeling always seems to take a lifetime. Because the only person who can heal us from the pain that we feel is usually the very same person who hurt us and made us cry. Sometimes, just as we are about to accept the failure of our relationship, that person comes back to us and unknowingly destroys our defenses.

Suddenly, we find ourselves hooked to love again. And it hurts even more because we know that person doesn’t share the same feeling anymore. Even if there is the urge to forget because it hurts there would always be that compelling reason to hope for love to come back again. It is like waiting for the sun to shine in the middle of a storm.

The love that brings us pain should be  the same love that would heal our hearts. When you love so much that it begins to hurt  then you have to learn to let go to lessen your  pain. Love hurts and sometimes it hurts like there is no tomorrow anymore. But there still is and there would always be one. No matter how battered and stricken we have been, there would always be tomorrow that would bring hope and love. But that tomorrow would never come unless we leave the past behind and live today as we should.

Let the pain remain for a while and let the tears fall as they please. And after all  that, move on and find your place in this world where you will find the person who wouldn’t talk to you as if nothing is wrong but  the person who would talk to you and make you feel that everything is going to be all right.

Evidence

there's substantial evidence. 

there's also preponderance of evidence. 

and there's evidence beyond reasonable doubt. 

fb messages that have 33 "***"s in them (my favorite friend REALLY counted them one by one) and a "mishu" at the end, or those that tells you how excited he is to take this "journey" with you. phone calls once in a while to hear your voice. 

that's substantial evidence, or "such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion." 

if he brings home pasalubong. if he calls a little bit more. if we have more amazing conversations deep into the night. if i find myself trusting him with my secrets. 

that'll be preponderance of evidence, or "evidence of greater weight or more convincing than the opposing evidence; evidence more credible and convincing, more reasonable and probable, and can be circumstantial in nature." 

one of these days i'll be sure. and that day, we'll hopefully be together. cause i'd have found evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the r's the one. 

Separate Lives

when i think about how things happened all over again, there's a huge part of me that wishes i'd been more circumspect. i guess it's the romantic in me, thinking that him finding me all of these years was some great cosmic act. i also guess it's the optimist in me, believing that people can change themselves. after all, it's been years, and a year can do a lot to change a person.

i should've known better.

as with the person i fell in love with in after college, he was sweet, caring, and attentive. it was everything i've always wanted in a partner. he cared for me like i was his princess and gave me all the love he could give. he was always present. he was perennially concerned about me - where was i? how was i? am i home already? how was my day? how was work? what time would i leave the office?

the first time he stumbled back into his old ways, i tried brushing it aside. he "researched" on me by misleading an officemate into thinking i was applying for a job in their company. said former officemate then called up the university and started asking questions about me. i guess i should be thankful that the person who answered was my friend, and that she knew better by calling me and confirming whether or not i was actually applying for a job. i confronted him about it and said, maybe said officemate made a mistake and misunderstood what i asked her. he went on further, maybe said officemate just wanted to make a nice impression and thought of taking it upon herself to research about you.

stupidly, i said, okay, but don't do it again.

a month or so later, i found out he had been reading my phone's messages. and apparently, he texted a friend, pretending to be a girl from community who wanted to hook up. again, i was blessed to have a friend smart enough to confirm with me what that was all about.

at this point, everyone in my immediate circle wanted him out of my life. they kept asking, how could you trust him now?

maybe the slight desperation with which he held on to what we had reminded me a little of how difficult it was to move on after the other person has moved on without you. maybe i saw a little of myself in him. maybe i didn't want to hurt as i've been hurt in the past.

and so i stayed. i stayed in spite of the warnings, in spite of the feeling that no one wanted to listen when we had problems anymore, in spite of being unhappy in the situation i was in.

the final straw came when my friend saw his name in a comment he made on FB. she asked, is this the same guy from way back? and, in a second email, sent minutes after the first one, she innocently asked - shouldn't you need police protection from this person? (oh, polce protection from a poiliceman?)

it was then that everything became very clear.

this was the person who threatened to make the rest of my after college life miserable after we broke up for a while

this was the person who would ring my phone and stay there without saying anything until i hung up.

and the questions that i ignored, i suddenly asked.

for the past two weeks, he's been lashing out on me. he'd swing from being mean - calling me names and all that - to apologizing profusely saying he's just lonely. he'd also accuse me of things he thought i did, or say i don't treat him the way i treat my other friends, or claiming i toyed with his emotions. and whenever i'd take time to point out what went wrong, he'd say it was all my fault.

memories are short. and when you forget things, you pay for them dearly.

i should never have forgotten that we broke up for a reason. we didn't break up cause we fell out of love.

we broke up cause he was going crazy on me.

Grew Apart

The season had brought me into nostalgic mode. same time few years, our whole family was ferried from manila to Batangas. it was an awesome experience seeing them bond together. this year though, i appreciate the  peace and blissful life that im enjoying. yes, we really can't have everything in life.

Then i realized how lucky i still am. for having family and friends who looked after me and clara  to perfection. they are the reasons that i got by from all the mishaps that cross path.

But honestly, i miss the friendship "r" and i had. i would remember, me always telling him that when things goes wrong i hope we keep the friendship, because it is what we both value and enjoyed together. more than the iloveyou's and kisses, the laughter and the concern counts more.

Sadly, expectedly, things has to end. you need superpowers to carry all of the pain that goes with it.

Today's A Really Good Day To Die

Remember the line? four medical students who perform an experiment to figure out what happens when you die. right before one of the characters subjected himself to the experiment, he takes a glance around the room and says it, as if confirming that should he die that day, he'd be ok.

Yesterday, i had one of those days:

Good morning chat with nothing but happy thoughts ... fun and almost traffic-free ride to work ... breakfast buffet with my wednesday buddy at heritage ... bonding with my boss over oatmeal cookies ... lovely lunch where we stuffed ourselves silly with food  ... impromptu shopping trip where i was able to convince my otherwise non-kikay neighbor to buy not one, not two, but three new pairs of shoes (all she had planned on buying was a new pair of shoes for a wedding) ... buying my nth pair of white ballet flats (you can never have too many shoes!) ... almost finishing drafting my decision, and not caring that i actually wasn't able to finish it ... finally opening a passbook savings account (YAY! i'm beginning to save money again!) ... peppermint mocha frappuccino ... supreme boy vs. star boy ... dinner party for jorgia: sugpo, lasagna, lechon, lechon baka, lengua, blue marlin, lumpia, california maki (i ate as much as my pants would allow me!) ... chatting with one of my favorite ex-students (who happens to be the daughter of my ex boss) ... having quality out-of-the-office time with my officemates (and loving it!) ... easy ride  back to my  house.

Before Anything Else

The moment the movie Before Midnight was shown in theatres, three of my friends who know me from way back asked me right away if I have seen it. I think the fact that they asked proves my reputation as a hopeless romantic. It further proves that I’m exactly the type who wears my heart on my sleeves and memorises all the mushy lines from these romantic movies.

Well, I won’t dispute that. And yes, I have in fact seen Before Midnight. And my verdict is that while it’s a great movie script wise and acting wise, I didn’t rave for it as much as I did with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. And it doesn’t take much reflection to figure out why.

 I watched Before Sunrise at a time when the concept of having a soul mate was something I still I believed in. Like totally. So I resonated with the whole meeting-your-one-great-love-on-the-train theme. I was in college at that time, and meeting The One was still a possibility; a happy thought, in fact, that saw me through all the angsts of my teenage years.

Before Sunset, I watched when I was in my late 20s, during that period in my life when I was so sure that love would find me sooner or later. That whole idea of seeing an old flame and realizing how much you are still in love with each other was just too beautiful  and inspiring. I remember watching that film and going home hopeful and thinking that maybe The One was someone I’ve already met. Maybe my law school crush was actually The One and we would run into each other during a court hearing and we’ll take it from there, just like in the movie. So yes, at that time, I still believed in The One. And I still believed that no matter how far I was from him, love would eventually bring us together. All these made Before Sunset a wonderful movie in my books.

So as expected, I looked forward to Before Midnight and counted the months before its theatre run. I wanted to see how the story played out and how the characters evolved. What would their dynamics be? How would their conversations sound?  And would they still be as witty and quick with their retorts? In this respect, I was not disappointed. I love that the movie’s theme has matured, and that the characters have grown. It’s brilliant how Ethan Hawke was no longer the handsome young writer, and Julia Delpy, no longer the pretty young thing who was exactly the type you’d pick up in a long train ride. I love their new dynamics and how their conversations were no longer just about their brewing sexual tension, but about real life issues and concerns.

However, in contrast to the first two films which made me giddy and hopeful,  this movie made me feel sad and hopeless. And it’s not because it was too much reality. In fact, its being realistic is one of  the movie’s strongest points. The movie saddened me because at the end of it all, I realised that I stopped evolving with the characters. Unlike the first two films which spoke my language and articulated my feelings, this one revolved around issues that, sadly, are still alien to me.   I could no longer own the character’s conversations. Aside from the part that dealt with turning 40 with nothing to show for it, there was nothing much for me to resonate with in the story.

My friends who got married are raving about the film and I can see why. They grew up with the characters. They know how it is to find The One and  to find reality setting in after that. They know the feeling of loving someone that much and hating him with the same intensity. They know how it is to have passionate fights with someone you love passionately. They have become like Jesse and Celine. They’ve found their loves and lived their lives.

Me, on the other hand…well… you know the rest of my story.

So while I loved Before Midnight and still consider it a brilliant film all in all, it was too much of a reminder— and a sad reminder at that— of how one aspect of my life has not moved at all after all these years. And of how it might never move in that direction anymore. Ever.

These thoughts have been crossing my mind lately after seeing the film. I’m tempted to watch Before Sunrise and Sunset again just to see if  my inner romantic is still well and alive. I have a feeling it still is. But then again, maybe now is not a good time to be reminded of that.

Upside Down

this still hold true pala.....

Stuck By Disco Lightning

Lalalalala
... is the title of the latest song that Clara made up.  It's the first of only two lines, the second being 'Yeah, yeah'.  It comes with complete choreography that involves hand waving and hip shaking.  Seeing her sing and dance to it is the best part of my day.  (I catch myself singing it as I walk down the office halls sometimes. Sheesh.  I'm not only the accountant - I'm also the resident loony.)

I don't know where  she gets all her crazy ideas.  I am pretty normal, even kind of boring, I think.

A typical phone call between Clara and me goes like this.

Me:  How are you, baby?
Clara:  I just met Julian Francisco!
Me:  Who is Julian Francisco?
Clara:  He's my stepfather!

Sheesh.  Last time I checked, I have not married anybody haha!!!.

Clara and I were Internet surfing at dusk when Ate Princess came into the room so I turned the light on.

Clara:  Why did you turn the light on?
Me:  The better to see Ate Princess and her lovely face and bright smile!
Clara:  And her long, smooth legs!

Whaddawhack?!  She is all of five years old.

Me, before we flew to Bali:  Clara, you're not going to be so sad and miss us too much, right?
Clara:  Actually, Mom, to be honest, I miss only Mommy Aba.

Ouch.  Gee, thanks, Clara.  I love you, too, man.

Clara:  Papaya si Ate Coleen sa swimming!
Me:  Huh?  Why papaya?
Clara:  If she's not good, then she's papaya, right?
Me (after 60 million hours trying to figure it out):  Oh, you mean kamote!

Hahaha.

If only all her comments are that funny and harmless, tho.

Clara, asking Mommy's eldest sister:  Lola, until when are you in London?
Lola Ninay:  For 6 months, until my visa expires.
Clara:  6 months!  Buhay ka pa ba non?!

Aaargh.  It's one of those moments when  I can't do much else but shake our heads and mumble:  no, no, no, Im are not her Mommy :)) !

Love and Other Dramas

(Somehow friends always come to me with their love woes.  While I love that they open up to me, I don't really know why they do.  Last time I checked, I have not done anything spectacular to qualify me as The Love Guru or something.  It also bothers me that they seem to get all the juicy romance dramas while all I'm stuck with are my same old stupid work-related problems.  Not fair!  Hahaha.  I recently dug this beauty up for one such love struck friend.  It's by Neil Gaiman, one of my all-time favorite writers, and who's in My List of Men I'm Allowed To Have Extra-Marital Relations With.  This is for you G, K, E, A, T, and R - amor vincit omnia.)        

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.  You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

- By the character Rose Walker in The Sandman #65, written by Neil Gaiman

Happy Birthday Momsy :)

It’s Inay’s birthday today and I couldn’t just let the day pass without writing something about it. I called her the minute Clara and I woke up and Clara sang happy birthday to her and said I love you even. I also texted her that I will always love her enormously, long after all her teeth fall out.

She’s not exactly the ideal mother. She swears way too much for a toddler’s impressionable ears. She also acts like an overgrown bully - or a thug, more like – easily losing his temper at our maids and pets and neighbors, and getting into frightening  rages even before the term was invented. But for all her imperfections, she never made me feel anything other than unquestionably and unfailingly loved, and sometimes that’s all you need from a mother.

One of my favorite childhood memories is going to the market with her, mainly for the part where she buys me gulaman at sago and bibingka, and when we get home would whip up chopsuey or sinigang na spare ribs or pinakbet or tortang dilis. I don’t know why she chose to take me over Ehye and Idad. Maybe bcoz I’ve always been a good girl and can be counted on not to throw a tantrum while she haggled over some fish or the other. (Yes, believe it or not, I was a good girl. I transformed into a maldita only much, much later.) There was also the time when the entire country was having all these blackouts, so at night she’d take this lounge chair that we had just outside the gate and tell me stories about her childhood and youth.

What amazes me most about Mom is that I learn new things from her everyday. It could be something completely useless to me like a historical fact or medical data or whatever, or something really practical and wise like where to buy export overrun ceramics or the best Chinese take-out.  I never saw her sit down with a book but she has talked to me about classic lit like Doctor Zhivago and stuff by W. Somerset Maugham. We could also enjoy together the no-brainer antics of Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker. She’s always up-to-date with current events, including showbiz matters. Just when I thought she couldn’t possibly be hiding anything else up her sleeve, she learned how to text, more than six months from the time she started using a cellfone. I almost fainted when I got my first SMS from her.

What I love best about her is that she’d always made me feel that she was happy with me just as I was - even back when I was just a little girl holding on to her hand while we went to market – and that I didn’t have to be anything to please her. She never made me feel like I failed her even when I was never really the achiever type. I even overheard her talking to her friends about how I gave up in the name of motherhood my high-profile  overseas career to a low-paying job as if  it was something that made her proud. Sometimes you need a parent to validate the choices you make, and to reassure you that, hey, you’re not doing too badly.

What I really admire about her is her simplicity. I don’t think being rich or powerful has ever been in her agenda. In fact, the one retirement dream she keeps mulling about involves a hut in the middle of a farm in Batangas and spending the rest of her days on earth caring for the orchids.

She need never read this blog to know that I love her back, that I would kill tigers for her.

Give

All I know is that when you badly need something, the best way to get it is to give it away first.

I didn't realize how selfish I was until I came to a point that I had been doling out things, time, resources that I would otherwise keep to myself. I always thought that everything I had in me were things I badly needed to keep because I was always dearth of so and so. This might sound a little pompous but I've always been selfish that generosity is something new to me. Until that time that I had nothing else to lose that I started giving most away that I have been receiving more than what I believe I deserved. It was when I eliminated the automatic response in my head of "What about me? I need that, too" that I started to receive everything I asked for. Truth is, a lot of it are thoughts placed upon me during worship. I remember Pastor Paolo saying God knows what you need so always trust. And trust I did. I remember that visiting Pastor. It was the time of the earthquake and the church he was discipling was in need of a car so he gave them his. Two weeks later, he received one that he had been dreaming of for so long. Of course, this is more than just asking God for material things, as I learned, even peace of mind and heart can be attained if it is freely given to those who need it.

It's too good a realization not to share.

The four day weekend gave me some time to think and for once they were nice thoughts. They were thoughts that were finally on the positive side, how everything in life has finally been coming my way again. For weeks, maybe months, all those weekends I didn't write about things I loved or things I knew for sure, I stayed away from the compose window because I was afraid my negativity would seep through the keyboards and infect anyone who read this blog. I tried limiting myself to product reviews, makeup looks and event reports because they were impersonal and I didn't need to link it to myself. But here I am now, I am finally once again energized, refreshed, happy, generous {I hope so!}, calm, rational and thinking with clarity. Thank you for this, Lord!

So over the week, I'd been thinking and here are my realizations that I hope would be of use to you too, my dearest reader someday.

1. You can get whatever you want in your life if you pray for it and put your mind into it. My friend J warned me of negative things I said when I'm annoyed. He always said that things have a way of being self-fulfilling prophecies and the Universe will not be able to determine if that's what you want or don't want so always fill your mind and lips with things you actually want. I know I've read about it from Rhonda Byrne's The Secret and whether there's a scientific explanation to it or not, it can't hurt to try! After all, yes we need to be realistic but I don't see any point in trying to dwell on what's not making us happy.

There were some things I asked for months ago and I asked God for a sign. It took me and everything else more than a month and when it finally came, it was like a lightning that went down on me while I was at an intersection waiting for a green light. It wasn't what I asked for per se but it couldn't be any clearer than what it was and for that I am beyond grateful.


 Remember this sign, now and always.

2. You can get whatever you want with the right tone and pitch of voice. That said, and especially if you're talking to a member of the male species, talk in a neutral tone, don't nag, sound as if you're in a business meeting and don't go up eight octaves.

3. Perception Management is key to anywhere. And probably one of the hardest things to work on. And while it's true that what other people think of you is none of your business, well --- let's just say it will always follow you like a shadow.

4. There will be always some bad decision that you made in the past that will haunt you. But my dearest, the only way out of it is to forgive yourself.

5. It's really hard to be kind, but harder not to be. I always tell myself that I will try to be kind every single day but it is hard, even when there are days that I literally bite my lip so that the moment will just pass me by and I will forget whatever mean thing that I was going today but there are times that it escapes and well, there's always tomorrow. A good friend once said kindness is a struggle. I believe that but there is nothing in the world that's unachievable.

6. You are not your past, you are not your father who left you and you are not your issues. Give yourself a break and breathe and let go.

7. Take cues from the little things. I tried about three times today to book a vacation that has been on my mind lately and by some twist of fate, it wouldn't go through. And then I realized that I had one up in front of me, waiting to be worked on and the one I'd asked for more times than I did the one I tried to book. I took it as a sign.

8. The more you know what you want, the lesser things you don't want upset you. - Bill Murray / Bob Harris | Lost in Translation

9. Surprise yourself. I had the biggest {good} surprise of my life this week. Hopefully it stays this way for a long, long time.

10. There's more to life than our personal woes. And as I found out, the cure for that is to busy oneself with helping others. Really.

11. Make friends with yourself. Best idea ever.

Twenty Priceless Things

1. surviving a 12-hour long road trip from QC to Ilocos Norte with the entire Castillo  family that includes an 8-month old princess and a 3 ½ year old tyrant

2. singing with Jewel at the top of our lungs as we pass the familiar highways of Bulacan, Pampanga and Tarlac, to the tune of anything in my celfone’s playlist, from Beatles to Blue Jeans, Unfaithful to Under the Sea, O Sole Mio to My Immortal

3. finding out that there are still certain things married people don’t know about each other even after they’ve been married 35 long years, as they swap childhood stories throughout the ride

4. the inviting waves of the beaches in La Union that look close enough to touch all the way from the car

5. a friend who lives two minutes away from Paoay Church

6. Paoay Church. Unesco Heritage Site. Built in the 1500s. Perfect from every angle.

7. the picture that I take of Jewel against the backdrop of the Paoay church entrance, lovely and tragic at the same time

8. the sound of bagnet crunching in your mouth, in there with tomatoes, onions and bagoong, and Yoshi pleading for more of the “white” and “crispy” (meaning the taba and balat)

9. gobbling up Vigan empanada dripping in sukang Iloko while getting a kick out of the many production numbers in the Paoay Lake National High School JS Prom

10. the serenity and myth of the Paoay Lake as viewed from the balcony of the Malacanang of the North

11. calesa ride all around Laoag City with Yoshi dearly clutching on to his The Promise DVD that he buys from a Moslem woman who sells pirated discs right beside all the chichacorn and native delicacies

12. the myriad of colors of euphorbia blooms in Auntie Claire’s and Auntie Azon’s gardens

13. having my picture taken with Jewel in a hallway draped with a million tivoli lights in Fort Ilocandia

14. the view of the coastline on the drive to Pagudpud, with Christian pointing to the exact spot on a big rock where the Wow Philippines commercial was shot

15. the giant windmills of Bangui (and Popsy regrets not stopping at the look-out point that he sees on cable tv weeks after)

16. screaming in total abandon as the big, strong waves of Pagudpud kick you onto the shore, with Yosh, Teody, Ches and myself never wanting to leave the water, and the absolute lack of crowds and stunning beauty of the place

17. Cape Bojeador. Built in the 1500s and still guiding ships till the present. Offers a panoramic view of the South China Sea. Makes you forget you’re supposed to be acrophobic.

18. the cobblestones and brick houses of Vigan that take you back to another era

19. a funeral band that gamely poses for pix with Jewel and later on play Cueshe’s Borrowed Time as the coffins are brought out of the Vigan Cathedral

20. Jewel’s big fight and long extemporaneous speech directed at the Chow King-Luisita manager whose staff made the fatal mistake of not putting the right number of sago and beans in her halo-halo. Classic and priceless both.

Muder Like No Other

...dear Inay,

I love you. Naks! I like that you allow me to be who I want to be....noisy, messy and bu-ang! You dont seen me as a princess in the pea. You dont want me to be one i know. You want me to be a warrior princess instead, because you are the warrior queen. It is mother's day. It is just a special as everyday that i am living becasue, come on...i am because you are.

You just didnt know. I didnt show you. I didnt know that the chance to show you would pass that fast. And it did - just like that - wasted! I never had anyone else applaud me like you did. Dote on me like you did, been proud of me like you did. You are irreplaceable. What i would not trade is hearing you say that you are mighty proud of the woman i have become, then of course you and itay will simply followed it with "anak ka kc namin".

Oh! tears, why cant you freeze inside my eyes and not flow out.

Happy Mother's Day! Excuses for the uhog :P sniff! sniff!