Hope is a beautiful thing. It is hope that allows us to be patient. It is hope that gives us reason to continue when the odds are against us.
Hope is also wonderful feeling, because sometimes the mere possibility of happiness is enough to mimic the feeling of happiness itself.
But hope also makes us vulnerable, breaks down our walls and exposes our deepest, darkest wishes, the ones we hide even from ourselves.
There is nothing more cruel than to allow a person a sliver of light in the darkness, and then extinguish that light again. The darkness he returns to is the same darkness he was once in, but somehow more unbearable than before.
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Because I was too affected by last night's episode of How I Met Your Mother (S07E10).
The small acts of kindness are the ones I appreciate the most.
A five-peso cupcake after a disappointing exam, a cup of coffee on a particularly tiring night, a belgian waffle after my phone got stolen, a friend hiding me in his room when I had to cry after a heartbreak, a supportive text message while going through a quarter life crisis -- those small things are the reasons I love my friends to bits.
But receiving a random act of kindness from a stranger is doubly touching.
After living in Manila for seven years, I have had a lot of experiences which almost made me lose trust and faith in people. My phone was once pickpocketed by an old lady in Starbucks, I've had my wallet stolen by a patient in the clinic. I've had patients who were mauled, raped, or abandoned. But my faith in man is restored by acts of kindness from strangers.
A security guard walking me home with an umbrella, because it rained suddenly and I was stranded in the middle of the road with no place to take shelter from the rain.
Or even as simple as a random guy giving up his seat on the train.
And today:
A jeepney driver offering me a free ride because it was a hot day for walking, and we were going the same direction anyway.
A Norwegian missionary couple buying me a cookie at Starbucks for no reason other than "I was a good girl" for studying. Hehe.
I am very blessed with a supportive family and wonderful friends. Even more so, to be surrounded by people who stand to gain nothing from me, but show me kindness anyway. :)
Today's events make me want to pay it forward, and do random nice things for strangers too. I just fear some people might think I'm creepy. Hahaha.
When I commute to Manila or to the nearest Starbucks from home (half an hour away) I just let my mind wander during the long bus and jeepney rides. When I am in a contemplative mood, my thoughts would be along the lines of: should I finally get my hair colored? A tablet or a smartphone? I wonder what happened to Cappie and Casey when they got to Washington. Will Zoe Hart and Wade Kinsella eventually end together? Shit why do I keep rooting for the happy go lucky loser-ish guys instead of the likes of Evan Chambers and George Tucker? Hahaha. Welcome to my brain.
Last week though I've been thinking about something else: my childhood. It probably started with that accidental mini-reunion with grade school classmates last weekend AND I JUST CAN'T STOP! It's like I've been going through microfilms of my early memories.
Frankly a lot of them are hazy, but you know how some bit of a memory just sticks and you can't remember all the details of what happened but you remember that one single part very very well as if it's a scene from a movie you watched or a line you memorized from a book?
My top ten most vivid memories (and not necessarily the fondest haha):
Sitting on my lolo's lap and playing with a mirror while I'm wearing a furry headband with bunny ears
Running after a jeepney because my younger brother had just gotten on it and then it started to move away
Stomping on a pink flower my kindergarten classmate Martin gave to me because I was embarassed hehehe
My evil classmate E holding my hands behind my back while my other evil classmate D tried to kiss me (also in kindergarten!) I remember how my dad arrived and scared the hell out of them. Creeps.
Riding a jeepney alone when I was in grade II and having this strange woman hold my knee protectively (The circumstances of this I remember rather well: I ran away from my yaya because she wouldn't take me to school and I wanted to play with my classmates hehe)
Crying that we didn't have a charcoal iron during a power blackout because I didn't want to go to school with gusot (creased) uniforms (Funny, because when I got to medschool I hardly ever ironed my uniforms. They get creased by lunchtime anyway hehehe)
Running away from home (and hiding behind a huge tree in our driveway) because my mom wanted me to wear a dress to church and I didn't want to.
Losing in a spelling contest because I misspelled RENOWNED.
Studying the bird embryo using balut and realizing for the first time it had feathers and a beak. Traumatic.
Being carried by my dad with his arms above his head while I spread my arms out and pretended to fly. I can even remember the feeling.
I have more, but these stand out the most. I can see them in my head OVER AND OVER.
This weekend has been about reconnecting with old friends.
Saturday night was a benefit concert for my gradeschool classmate/ childhood friend Ian who recently had brain surgery for an AVM (i.e. a tangled mess of blood vessels) which as expected, was packed with friends from gradeschool. It was good to be greeted by a sea of familiar faces, now all grown up, and to see how everyone has been doing. It was also a sea of AWK-WARD, because gradeschool connections were something I didn't take particularly good care of (something I regret now), and while all of them continued in the same high school and stayed together throughout college, I went off into the sunset and never really looked back until recently. They were old friends, but they were also strangers. Funny how that happens. That night I found truth in the saying it's easier to make new friends than reacquaint with old friends.
Sunday night was high school night which was less awkward for three reasons:
Most of them were close friends I stayed in touch with during med school.
It was easier to reminisce about highschool, which I enjoyed, than elem, which I despised. (I was a dork who was bullied for knowing all the answers. I hate gradeschool I soweaaar.)
We had tequila. Hehehe.
Top: 4 out of 9 of my HS barkada + the requisite photobomb from Kups
(yes, as in "kupal" hahaha); Bottom: Our favorite boyzzz
The point is, I know that people come and go, and that some people stay while some just pass by, and though it's sad to lose people you really can't do anything about it because that's just how life rolls. I just realized I don't want to be the kind who just stays awhile to have a good time and then proceeds to the next big adventure leaving everyone else behind.
Last Saturday I also saw two of my really good gradeschool friends, with whom conversing turned out to be really easy even after more than a decade. We exchanged numbers and made promises to stay in touch and get together soon, and it's a promise I intend to keep. I think it speaks of how old I am (hahaha I really feel old at twenty-three) that I've begun to put more effort in maintaining the relationships I have instead of moving through them like I used to do when I was younger. Yay to (ehem) maturity! Hahaha! :D
With Joanna, my best friend in Grade I and Grade II,
and Jeff, one of my childhood friends.
Sorry for the sudden volley of pa-deep posts! I may be ovulating HAHAHA.
Ever felt like you no longer belong somewhere you used to fit in so well?
This is my home and I love it, but lately I've been feeling more and more out of place, like a fish that suddenly lost its fins and grew a pair of legs overnight.
It's bizaare. I'm an alien in my own hometown.
The perils of leaving and meeting new people. The people you once knew are pushed farther and farther to the periphery until they're already too far removed from you.
It would thrill me to no end, it someone were to send me an old-fashioned letter or a postcard. Not an email, or a printed typewritten one, but an genuine old-school letter painstakingly written on nice paper, complete with ink smudges and crumpled edges; or a postcard thoughtfully picked out from another part of the world. Is that too much to ask? Hahaha.There is just something about carefully-penned thoughts on ink that tickles me inside.
My favorite theory of physics (not that I know much, but I really wish I did) is the M-theory, or the theory of multiverses, also known as the many-worlds-theory or multiple-worlds-theory or the theory of alternate/parallel universes. It dummy-speak, it says the universe we inhabit is but a small pocket in a much greater universe, and every possible outcome happens in a universe parallel to our own.
Vampire Weekendhas been one of my favorite bands since they launched their first album. I swear, they're not just on my cool playlist. If this was the age of LPs, their records would be super gasgas (scratched and overused) by now because everytime I open iTunes I invariably play their songs.
It was from VW that I first heard the term Oxford comma. They have a song which asks:
People are too affected by what's happening on TV.
I open my Twitter and Dimples Romana and Ryan Bang are trending topics (read about the controversy here). Everyone has an opinion about it! Why is the network allowing it to happen, what she did was admirable, why did he have to cry on television etc.
Ryan Bang. I just met him today courtesy of Twitter.
The network wars seem to extend to the fan bases. My blockmates once had intense debate about Kapuso (GMA 7) vs Kapamilya (ABS-CBN). Yes, this happens even in the top medical school in the country.
A usual dinner topic for my mom and dad is primetime TV and how this character is so naive, how this plot dragging on too long, why everyone gets amnesia or catatonia! I used to participate in these discussions until I realized I had a better solution. I stopped watching.
So come on people, get a life.
Says the girl who cried when Numb3rs had their finale. And who still watches Casey-Cappie videos on YouTube! Haha.
I was about to watch ABC's new drama Revenge when this quote flashed on the screen and my mind began to stray from the show and got lost pondering the words of Confucius.
When I was a little child, storms triggered fear. I was deathly afraid of the sound of thunder and of being struck by lightning. At night I slept in a ball with my blanket up above my head. Darkness was my solace, because streaks of lightning in my window terrified me.
As I grew up a bit and went to school, stormy weather meant no school and staying in bed until noon. I had grown out of my thunder and lightning fears because there was no way I was more of a scaredy-cat than my little brother. I teased him to no end, the hapless brat. I began to love the cold weather, having champorado (chocolate porridge) for breakfast, the longer play times, and being able to read my Sweet Valley Kids novels and my other children's books the entire day. Instead of having to learn the feminine and masculine genders of animals (peacock and peahen, duck and drake, cow and bull ugh I hated those a duck is a duck) I read about things they don't teach in school, like dinosaurs and killer-plants, how airplanes fly and why we can only see stars at night. The only time I remember hating a storm is when I was seven or eight and electricity got cut off for more than a week and I had to go to school in un-ironed uniforms. :D
It was the same throughout high school, maybe the elation over cancelled classes even increased as the subjects got harder and less fun. I think you never really care much about bad weather as long as you stay safely ensconced in four solid walls with a loving family and hot chocolate. It never occurred to me, and if it did, likely only in passing, that storms did some actual destruction. Even the news seemed too remote to feel real.
In med school I started to see things differently, although initially I only saw storms as minor inconveniences. Storms in Manila meant floods, and floating garbage and animal detritus. They meant cancelled classes that would never get taught, topics we would have to read on our own for our exams. They meant having to stockpile on food and living on instant noodles and corned beef until the floods got a little lower. But I never worried about my or my family's safety. Storms were a hassle and annoying and "bad trip", but it wasn't scary nor terrifying. Scorn me for naivete, but that was the way it was.
And then Ondoy came. I was on duty at the Labor Room /Delivery Room (LR/DR) of the Philippine General Hospital. I was only a clerk then, and during that time, we were still included in class suspension decrees. We got the call from our monitor a little after lunch hour, saying we could go home, etcetera. We still had patients though, so we decided to stay a little longer. When we were about to leave late in the afternoon, every exit from the hospital was flooded up to mid-thigh. Patient-watchers were in a panic, and all food from the hospital cafeteria and the cooperative store had been bought. We called McDo, Jollibee, Chowking, Domino's, Yellow Cab -- nobody was delivering to our area because Taft Avenue was submerged. Eventually we found an eatery that was willing to deliver goto. It had no meat, but it was one of the best meals I've had.
The storm let up after a while and we were able to leave around 9PM because the path to Robinson's was clear. We stayed over at a classmate's place, played Rockband and ate Jollibee for breakfast. I went home, thankful it was over. But it wasn't. We had no classes for a week. Even after the storm subsided, the college gave us time to help those who were affected by the storm. It was the first time a storm terrified me again since I was little. My friends and I holed up in a condo and read the Left Behind series (about rapture and the end of the world) and joked about the apocalypse over fried chicken from mini-stop. But behind the jokes, I felt real fear. It was the first time I saw a storm as capable of so much destruction.
After that, whenever a storm arrived, I'd take the two hour trip home if I could. If I couldn't, I'd say a silent prayer for Him to keep me and my family safe, text my parents several times a day asking for updates, and hope that the storm will pass soon and with no to minimal casualties. Gone were the days when storms meant enjoying the cold air and the extra time to stay in bed.
Today I experienced my first big storm as a non-student, and back at home. This morning I woke to the sound of a large branch falling near my window. I said a little prayer of thanks that my dad's flight made it yesterday and that all of us were home in bed, and went back to sleep with the sound of rain and wind in the background. Later I ate champorado with danggit (dried fish) and listened to my dad as he told us about another large branch that tore a hole through our garage roof.
I am grateful to be home. I am once again ensconced in four solid walls with a loving family and bowls of champorado, in a neighborhood where flooding or landslides has never been a problem. I am safe and secure. And for now I have nothing to worry about.
But I will always know how much havoc a storm can wreak, and never again will images of destruction remain only images. I feel despair for those lost in the storm, for the damage it has cost the city I have called home for the past seven years. I say a prayer for all who are away from family, for all whose houses are less than secure, for all who have lost something in this storm, be it a loved one or possessions.
Taken by Marian Pastor Roces, initially posted by @Jimparedes.
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Storms always remind me of this song. Someday, on a stormy night like this, I will sing this song to my child.
I remember the days when my cousins and I were really close. I had a cousin my age and we'd dress up in matching clothes to church, fix our hair the same way, sing and dance together for family, tell each other all our secrets. I'd get excited whenever she'd come over to visit, and I'd beg my mom to go to their house all the time. And then somehow, we changed. I don't actually miss her, we've grown too far apart for that, but I wish we'd never lost touch, stayed close, never grew up.
I don't have any picture of the two of us as children so I'm posting this one instead. They're the grandkids of our foster parents in the community. Aaah, bedtime gossip. My cousin and I used to do this all the time. I'd make sumbong how mean my yaya was to me and she'd always be supportive.
I have these mean girl dreams where I go around in heels, a perfect pedicure, and immaculate hair and make-up, and bitch so hard I make people bleed. Don't judge me. Hee.
