a relative world

Showing posts with label history overdosing. Show all posts

Every year we spend our summers at home. Away from the concentrated two month holiday action (read crowded) happening everywhere. We have the privilege to start our holidays very late in August until September. When rates are lower, when places are less crammed & when the weather is just a little less warm. While I'm still waiting for our holidays to start, and my husband to come back from an emergency call for work somewhere in Africa, our summer was far from boring.

Old friends visited all the way from Amsterdam, Rome & Ticino. Revisiting places with an eye of a tourist is likewise a rediscovery of everyday, ordinary landscape and people. Since it's the first time I had our car broken into, literally with a shattered window that we had to drive 200km with, I was surprised on how people are sincerely concerned with the incident. Or how one of them marvels at the beauty of the beach of Cannes with the boulevard & tall buildings as backdrop. Or when one happily appreciates the singing of the cicadas. Which I learned is not typical everywhere like in Ticino. However, the most essential thing they made me see is how friendly the French are. That's because, my dear friends, everything changes once you speak French. And words sound sweeter in French.

"You're still the same!" or "You haven't changed a bit!" The famous welcome greeting of long time friends who haven't seen each other for a significant amount of time. This can go beyond mere pleasantry and it makes you wonder if it's a good thing. We had an amazing Facetime session with a friend whom we haven't seen nor had any contact with after 23 years. I was even hesitant at first & when I told her about it, she just said, "Hello, this is still me!" But there are friends who literally didn't change that you don't have that kind of energy to relive the happier days with them. I guess the best part of seeing old friends that go way back 20+ years, and yes, that made me feel old, is that estranged familiarity. That after a bottle of wine, or after eating comfort food, it brings out our essence. We all change. We just need a little poke here & there and the you, the person we all know, is still surely there. Maybe after the kids are in bed.

Our best visitor yet is this baby hedgehog who wandered in our garden one night. Vidar didn't even bother. But I think he already tried.

It has always been a different skyblue here. The moment you get out, the intense heat embraces your face. Street children peeking through your car window. A splash to clean your windshield for a few coins. You're thinking how traffic has gotten better & agreeing that the streets are cleaner. You see the familiar uniforms that adorn the streets. More high-rise buildings & colorful billboards. The eternally crazy jeepneys. It's so vibrant, so alive. I'm home.

If an odor can be described as time freezing, our house has this exact smell. Seems so unfamiliar at first but when you start placing everything in the house that has been unmoved since you first left, the scent becomes your childhood memories. The home cooked food pig out, the story telling, the noise. Amidst all that, the recognition that when our house has remained absolutely the same, my nieces & nephews have grown. My mother wonderfully adding more years, probably something a daughter would have never imagined - that our parents can actually get old. I'm getting older. I have been called ma'am countless times.

Walking around where my husband lived for almost two years, he wondered where all the Filipinos have gone. "What do you mean?" I asked confused while I looked around me & saw nothing but Filipinos dining & shopping in all of Greenbelt's 1 to 5. "That part there," and he pointed at Greenbelt 4, "It's like a museum." So we marched & marched where locals can be found. Reaching Greenbelt 1, he excitedly said, "Now, this is the Philippines!" We had Razon's yummy Halo halo here & continued to be amazed with Manila's ever growing super malls.

As I finished packing for our week trip to Sipalay, I phoned my sister-in-law & asked her about my handcarry for the plane. She didn't reply & I asked her if she's at home so I can call her landline. "And you, where are you?" she asked laughing. I said I was at home & she shouted, "Sol, today's your flight to Sipalay!" I darted to the room to tell my husband that we missed the morning flight. Then darting to my mom's room & told her the same thing. Darting all around the house for new plane tickets & a lost day. I cancelled my hour & half massage that night.

Everytime I go back to the Philippines, I have this plan of doing the things I never got to do the last time I went. You'd think that after the numerous back & forths, you'd be an expert planner. Of course it never happens & it just keeps adding up. And it's a good thing. Coming home always has surprises. I just hope I still have the time to tick off the undone things on my list with the people who matter the most. While people complain about being in the Philippines as I groan as much for being in France, I had the wonderful pleasure of actually having two entirely different homes. It is amazing how going back to where you come from actually makes you more grounded on wherever you choose to be now.


If they just looked it up a little more... a shop inside Terminal 3 Airport

Christmas only struck me the other day when lights were set up on our barrio's streets & lamp posts. I almost felt a weird pressure about the holidays this year. This time I didn't even wonder whether to decorate or not (not). I think I've finally outgrown the Christmas spirit that I want to crawl in a hole & come out when it's over. I actually feel remorse about this that it makes me squirm to that same hole nevertheless.

Needless to say, I am more excited to escape a good part of winter for the sun & sea back home. I have already scheduled moments of idle pleasure under a coconut tree on powdery white sands with cocktails under a scorching tropical sun. And among our brief stay in paradise, I will be back to my former life. The life I left 11 years ago & regularly look forward to recapturing everytime I'm there. But then this time, there was a sudden & rude awakening that home has become like a room that you know it's there but you can never go in. It just doesn't feel like you're part of your past, a tourist in your own home.

On the surface, I would always remember what my mother told me the first time I came home after 4 years of France - "How come you don't look like somebody who came from France?" And she was so right since I purposely wore the same clothes I left with 4 years ago. Like time just stopped. While in the former life, I was almost never behind the latest fad, now I always come home with awe & surprise like I was living in a cave all this time. But looking like 10 years has passed you by is really nothing, what with all the malls & the incessant updates from television shows & commercials, and even billboard advertising!

It's finding again the people you had tremendous memories with & you realize that it does not make any connection anymore like it used to. There are just a very few friends who even after years of no contact, would still be the same like it was just yesterday. Then there are people you didn't expect to be as happy seeing you back home. But it's normal, I guess. I left, life went on, we all made new memories & things are never the same for everybody. And the memories made when we were younger can never have the same impact now that is why we can never have the same kind of friendship later in life.

These days I feel I'm in between homes. I still don't quite feel at home here in France, as much as I try & I don't feel at home anymore back in Manila. Thank goodness for family. It is obliged to be the same no matter how many years it has been. Family, even with the usual squabble, is the only place you will always feel at home.

I am a perpetual tourist & I have to admit that I want to again be lost in translation somewhere else, building rooms of a former life. Afterall, we always find ourselves revelling the people in each room through a window while we all get on with our lives.

Where is your home?

It now really doesn't matter where you are. A simple click can transport you to your kindergarten classroom or to your highschool prom. The birth of online social networking have gathered old friends (BFFs!), childhood enemies (Do you remember hiding my lunchbox?), childhood losers (He's now an OB?!), childhood bullies (He's now a priest?!) & teenage love teams (How do his kids look like?). It brings you back to the days, reminding you of your foolishness that now makes you giggle. It's like 1987 all over again.

The other day, consumed with a deep nostalgia after one of my highschool batchmates made a video montage of our old photos & get this, the Bagets' Growing Up by Gary Valenciano as the background music, just made me laugh. The clothes, hairstyles & sunglasses just go well with the silly poses & candid shots. And looking at some of my photos I don't remember being taken or posing for made me somehow sentimental. A 15 year old kind of sentimental. I was timesick. I wanted to revisit the simpler days.

It was just not only about finding old friends but also a part of you. Where everything was magical. The smile in our eyes. Letting go, losing ourselves & not caring at all. I guess reconnecting to our past is like our tiny oasis from the big life of a grown up. A refuge from all the calculating. Being careful. Making decisions. Doing responsibilities. Sometimes you just want to recapture that part of you & use it in your daily routine. But it's just sometimes too hard now to look at things as if it was your first time. Everything now is just ordinary. I'm being nostalgic. So shoot me.

The oldest photo that surfaced on my network was our kindergarten class picture. And of course finding some of the other kids on it. So you can imagine what sort of other photos have been ransacked & shared. Our batch's 20th Year Reunion, both in Manila & the US, were a success because of this online network. You connect & you reconnect like 20 years didn't pass by. You reconnect like images flashing on how those 20 years have passed. So it doesn't really matter where you are. Just one click & it feels like you've never left. For a moment, there is no distance.

I really think I wouldn't be able to live without internet. Shoot me.

Receiving this old photo on my email yesterday morning made me fold my worries in 4, stuffed them in a small box pushed under the bed. 11 years doesn't seem so long but when you're living life, you hardly notice the changes. We wouldn't have imagined how we got to where we are right now 11 years ago.

But sometimes, there are changes that are impossible not to notice. In more than a month, we'll be moving to a new place, restarting a new phase in our life. Everything will be fresh & more discoveries are in order. Although I have always believed that it's just a matter of geography, as when I arrived France 8 years ago, every place is unique. You just can't help but begin anew.

When I wondered about "being home" & being somewhere else, I just can't help having that twinge in my heart for leaving this little space we grew to love for 7 years. It's not only the four corners of our apartment. It's the morning & afternoon sun. The tree by our balcony & the happy plants that adorn it. The little unnoticeable conveniences like having a parking just beside, the mailbox just in front, and having everything you need within walking distance. The sea just a few meters away. And certainly Marseille, in a weird way, is something my husband & I (especially him) just fell in love with.

Although we're moving only 2 hours away, Spéracèdes is a whole new different landscape. It is a town in the border of the Var & Alps Maritimes region, still in the Provénce-Alps-Côte d'Azur department in the south of France. Instead of the sea, we'll have a lake. Our view of the sea is replaced by the verdant mountains of the Alps, the city of Cannes & part of the sea from afar. Our apartment will become a maison de village (a typical old French house village) with 3 floors - living room on the ground floor, kitchen on the second & 2 bedrooms on the third. Rather than a hyped touristic place, we'll only have children laughing & crying from the school just beside or the sound of silence of this arriere pays, loosely translated as backcountry. When the movement is not the same as from Manila to France, it still reminded me of how it felt.

When all that is changing for us, we're also moving to another phase in my "subfertility." When I received the results of a relatively new bloodwork, the Anti-Mullerian hormone, I'm in waiting to exactly know what it really means. Even if my research gave me a rather bleak explanation of my results, I will wait for confirmation in 2 weeks for my OB appointment to exactly know where I stand. This is another realization in my life that needs more growing up to do.

11 years is long. My friends & I have gone through a lot of changes in our lives. But yesterday brought us even after almost 30 years now to come together & say "we're not doing bad at all." Because there is always good in change.

manks, thanks for this wonderful surpise

My brother-in-law called last weekend to ask us about portable video games for his son's upcoming birthday. Since my nephew-in-law is turning 10, he gets to choose between a PSP (Playstion Portable) & a Nintendo DS. And since my nephew-in-law has a 6 year old brother, he also gets either a Nintendo DS or Nintendogs (for the dog lovers). We strongly advised Nintendo for Nintendo's platform is truly geared for the kids. I couldn't really remember what I used to get for my birthdays but it's sure nothing like the toys of today. Sunny smiles of the kids at Villa Escudero.

Like the evolution of our society, toys have advanced to the greatest imagination & creativity ever. Scientific researches resulting to absolutely educational gadgets, employing different skills necessary for learning. Some toys are so complex that even an adult is required to concentrate & understand first before playing & having fun. There are so many toys to choose from. From the cuddly stuffed toys, the colorful blocks, the singing books, the puzzles & lego type constructions (which I am so bad at) to video games. It sure is fun while learning.

But for my generation, I preferred to be on the street than playing with my classic & standard toys which solely required my own creativity. I remember my mom shouting behind me to be careful & to come home on time for lunch or dinner, and to be as clean as I can be. In my childhood, learning was more about the joys of picking up recreational materials in the park & playing fair with my friends. Learning was about getting dirty & having little bruises.

Street games are as educational as the toys of today & it builds character:
- taguan (hide & seek) taught us agility & the motion of time. Without them, we'll still be hiding while everybody has already gone home.
- patintero taught us teamwork, strategy & the art of bluffing.
- shato taught us focus & concentration, coordination & math, and determination to chant shato continuously for the whole loser's run.
- tumbang preso taught us speed, coordination & sportsmanship, especially to the "it."
- agawan base likewise taught us agility, teamwork, strategy & competitiveness.

Street games also build camaraderie & teaches us to be a good loser. It only requires trees (or lamp posts), rocks, sticks & cans to almost no materials at all. We get a lot of exercise & sun. My mom used to freak out & send the maid in a thorough hunt to find me but it taught me basic responsibility. Me & a friend went on a search for the perfect grass sled, found a dilapidated plywood & sled down a 10 meter slope down to a main road. We were saved from crashing a car but we didn't get away from the old woman sceaming at us for all the dust we brought to her house just in front. We had freedom.

We didn't have high-tech, state of the art toys. We didn't have 15 channels of cartoons & kid's shows but only Sesame Street, The Electric Company & the Saturday Fun Machine on channel 9. As classic & as standard our toys are, they encouraged imagination, creativity & inventiveness. Look how we all turned out. I loved smelling like the sun.

Remembering the sounds of Christmas of quite a long time ago.

1. "Merry Christmas, Ma'am, Sir," combined with a special holiday smile, in all places of business & consumption from the taxi to department stores & restaurants, with or without the expectation of a holiday tip, contribute to the holiday ambiance.

2. "Pasko na, Sinta Ko" by Gary Valenciano is playing on the jeepney on your way to work & you don't mind hearing it every year. It's timeless.

3. The tinkling sound of Christmas tunes that goes with the twinkling of colorful Christmas light decorations that you may find in your exterior house decorations, small places of business & even in Aling Tinay's sari-sari store.

4. Television & radio holiday commercials geared to remind us of the holiday spirit may it be by consuming or religious in nature, bring us all together in one spirit of Christmas.

5. The rattling of folded paper in a pencil holder when your officemate or barkada approaches you to pick a name for the monito-monita, an imposed manner to spread the joy.

6. "We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas," together with the jingling of a makeshift tambourine of kiddie carollers made of tin cans & coins who through time complains when you give them 5 pesos for their 2 questionable songs.

7. The clinking toast of beer bottles among friends to all the years of alaskahans, hangovers & everything in between. Even though you never miss a weekend inuman with them, the holidays will always be different.8. The chime of churchbells at 15 to 4am for the Simbang Gabi which also means it's bibingka & puto bumbong, all warm wrapped in banana leaves for breakfast. One of the many Filipino food I am proud of.

9. Your mom's voice telling you to stop watching the Christmas cartoon special on TV & start getting ready for church or telling you to stop eating the Noche Buena food. Whether she's angry or not, her reminders to do this & that will always be a part of the Chrismas Eve preparations.

10. The laughters & the kulitans over your dad's Christmas songs still on vynil records while you eat your family's humble Noche Buena midnight meal. The noise of all these voices at the same time, the sweet chaos of family banter & mockery, will always be your best memory of Christmas.

11. The tearing & crumpling of gift wrappers, the oohs & the ahhhs & even the "what the..." chorus of responses over our Christmas gifts by the tree, will always be one of the most heartwarming family moments.

12. The sound of silence after the midnight Christmas mass, Noche Buena meal, the gift-giving & when everybody has gone to sleep, that sound of bursting happiness & flowing gratitude.

isang gabi ako ay nagpapahinga, napansin ko ang bituin

at ako ay tilang nakatulog, di ko napansin ang aking narating
ako raw ay nasa ibang mundo, kulay rosas ang ginto
ng ika'y aking unang nakita, araw ko ay sumaya

Ilang mega taon na rin ang nakalipas noong dinadayo namin ng walang kamatayan ang Kalye Bar sa Palanca. Isang daang piso, dalawang red horse, habang sigaw na hiling kantahin ng banda ang Beep Beep o Balong Malalim ng Juan de la Cruz. Ilang isang daang piso at red horse, ilang kanta na inihatid kami sa ibang lugar, sa ibang mundo sa loob ng ilang oras. Minsan naman sa ilalim ng buko, naka-upo sa mesang sira, walang pansin na sigaw nating kanta Ang Himig Natin habang naghihintay sa dagat ng Nasugbu. Nakapikit at kahit nakadilat, ang mundo sa harap natin ay totoo. Payapa, kasama ang kaibigang tunay, ang kinabukasan ay mararating pa lamang sa ibang daigdig.

Ngayon pagkaraan muli ng panahon, ang walang tigil na tinig nanaman ni Pepe Smith at Mike Hanopol ang maririnig sa loob ng sasakyan ko - mga parehong tugtugin at salita sa ibang lugar at mundo, lumalakbay sa iba't-ibang panahon. Isang kinabukasan na ang naabot at isa nanaman bahagi ng kinabukasan ang hinaharap. Walang tigil na bukas. Baka nga minsan, may mga taong pumipilit humawak sa nakaraan dahil walang maabot ngayon ni bukas. Kung minsan, kasama tayo sa mga taong ganon.

Ganon lang talaga ang buhay, sagana sa paglakbay - sa gawa, sa panahon at sa isip. Ngunit sa ating paglalakbay, di maari na parating masaya. At sa paglakbay natin, parating may magbabago at minsan nakakadala ito ng lungkot.. Kung minsan ganado tayo sa lahat ng pangyayari sa buhay natin at kung minsan nawawalan tayo ng gana. Yan ang mga panahon na binabalik-balikan natin ang kahapon. Lahat tayo dumadaan sa mga araw na ganito. Di ito kaka-iba.

Ngunit nakakalungkot rin talaga na pagkatapos ng tatlong pu't pitong taon ng Juan de la Cruz ay pinapakinggan ko pa rin sila.

*Ang album Maskara ay pasalubong ni jeanette, pangatlo ng Juan de la Cruz, inilabas ito noong 1975. Wala pa akong 5 taon noon.*

While the weather didn't know what to do, I was moving from the south to the north & west and back. A second visit this year from home got me busy for the past few weeks & I have mixed feelings on recovering our apartment's regular stillness & ordinary routines. It's really easier to crave for solitude than having to go over in getting used to silence again. And tasting home again is such a sweet comfort - having it twice in a year is like a candy store window you know you cannot have. Below, me & Jeanette in Basilique Sacré Coeur Paris.

Going to Paris for a couple of days got me bummed out - the metros, the crowds, the capricious weather - but seeing my sister-in-law & her mom is the only delight of Paris - I get to make Jeanette kulit again just like the old days. Apparently, we had an exceptionally warm weather in Paris that made walking more unbearable. Following the usual route from Paris, we were welcomed by the rain & cold in Lourdes. On our way back to Marseille, we had to make an unexpected detour. After being consumed by Paris & the drenching rain of Lourdes, I was never this frantic in being home. Arriving Toulouse, my left shoe's sole tore open, the train arrived, we got in, changed my shoes - in the train heading to Bordeaux. We were 20 minutes too early for the right train & the most expensive mistake I made (after 6 years of taking the train), especially if you happen to get a controller who is a total asshole. I'm boycotting any train trips for now, or until I'm able to laugh at my impromptu visit to Bordeaux.

Then there's the reconnection to the past & how the versions of yourself resurfaced. The random reminders of how you changed & how you actually miss your former versions. The bridging to your one true home & how things will only be better if you're there to see it for yourself. On how my titas cry when they go, touched by the thought that I am so far away from family. The thing is after they've left, there was this impending hole - masked by their visit - that has been threatening me long before. What am I going to do after they leave? It's so exhausting to go over things again, justifying my neverending plans, or rather fears, and those nuits blanches that ties my stomach inside out. Those knots that remind me of my frustration when things don't go the way I hoped them to be. I am a prisoner of freedom now so uptight with normality just because I don't happen to have all the things I consider important in life. When you know exactly what you want but just couldn't have & you need to change plans. Sometimes we just receive little doses of life but potent enough to paralyze us for a moment.

My mom has always been a smart dresser. According to my titas, she would sometimes buy fabric to make into a dress instead of buying food. Being the youngest & the only girl, we used to wear a mother & daughter terno when I was younger. She would force the boyish rug rat I am into wearing jewelry & dresses when all I want is the same Tretorn rubber shoes as my brothers. You could say that I was a late bloomer & started being more girly when I went to college.

"You don't look like you came from France!" I remember my mom telling me when we went home in 2004. I purposely wore the exact same clothes when I left for France 4 years prior & it made me feel good. But the remark was quite puzzling. How does a balikbayan supposed to look?

Looking through the new photos of my friends way back in highschool & college in Friendster has always been fun & surprising. Some you can't recognize, others are amazingly transformed not only physically but also in life. In short, there was an apparent change. And I wondered about my own physical evolution - in what way is it apparent to them?

As much as a comment like, "Grabe, you never changed, ganon pa din looks mo since you left..." from a friend I didn't see for 4 years is not so significant as "You still look the same!" from a friend I didn't see for 20 years. Really makes you wonder if it's a good thing or not. And the idea that your sense of style & complexion normally follows when you change country is evident - more expressive in make-up & clothing & pale skin. My mom likewise told me that I looked better when I'm pale & I have always loved sunbathing & getting a golden color.

My style in clothes has always been discreet & classic. I have never been expressive in make-up nor in the way I dress. My aunts told me that I look younger without make-up & I just occasionally put some because I am too lazy to wash it off before going to bed. From branded clothes & shoes before I got married to total generic filled cabinet & shoe rack - my discreet black shirt doesn't need a brand & I am seriously thinking of putting more colors in my cabinet.

Change is evident. It is growth. We cannot look the same as 20 years ago. But I'll never know why it is always expected in a new place & after a long absence. Maganda siya ngayon. Does it really say something on where we are in life?

In changing wardrobe, will my mom tell me next year, "Wow, you really look like you came from France!"

Time flies at an accelerating rate. It's christmas once more & another year to our lifetime. I can still remember moments from last year like it was just yesterday. I do wonder if it is because we're now older & we unconciously know that we are at the second half of our lifetime - it is true that the first half brought us more mystery & surprises of things to come.

-My mom's Santa collection -

It was in mid-November when Paris switched their magical christmas lights on - Champs Elysses beaming with holiday madness. In our little barrio, christmas lights were turned on the first of December. You wouldn't even notice them - just another light on the lamp post. The French are just starting to buy their christmas pine trees & decorating their houses with a holiday spirit. The mall crowd have doubled since the turn of the month. I wondered again why my gift shopping was too easy this year.

In the malls, although there are no christmas songs to set the ambiance even further, a stage is set up with your every christmas imagination while Santa waits for children's wishes & photographs. The shops have those little baskets filled with free papillon chocolate candies & super promos. Extra tables line the entrance of shops to accomodate the gift wrapping demand. It is literally a holiday rush that allows us to get into the spirit about 3 weeks before christmas.

My first christmas in France was not that difficult. I was discovering a lot of new things &

to experience the holidays in a different setting excited me. The christmas eve dinner overwhelmed me to no end - France truly exhibits the significance of conviviality in dining & intimacy. Dinner starts at past 8 with the best wines, recipes & cheese. Coffee, hot tea or even digestive liquor are served at past 1am. Gifts are distributed, opened & appreciated. Then you're half digesting in bed at 3 in the morning wondering how you're going to lose those extra pounds when you're about 3 months into the height of winter. But it's just so tempting to have another sliver of foie gras or that homemade dessert. It does only come especially during the holidays. New years are normally spent with friends, champagne & parties. Fireworks are prohibited. Who wants to freeze out in the cold anyway?

- My mother-in-law's homemade Foie Gras, served together with white wine & bread is considered one of the world's greatest delicacies along with truffles & caviar -

The thing is there is nothing like the Filipino christmas. Sure it is the height of total consumerism but putting that aside, there is a certain sensation I couldn't grasp amidst the white christmas of France. After five christmases, I've never put up a tree. Just those simple ornaments for a tinge of christmas decors & it didn't bother me so much. We spent the holidays at our own home only once because I had to work but we normally celebrate it in Belfort with the whole family. Besides, I don't have my mother's knack for house decorations.

As early as September, radios already tease the Filipinos with a little holiday cheer. The malls start setting the christmas spirit & there is literally a change in the air. Sure there are also people who take the opportunity to score brownie points for an early christmas gift or to accumulate them at the end of the year. The Philippines is known to celeberate the holiday season the longest. It is certainly not a christmas rush but rather an ambiance - a spirit I had to understand by being away from this environment I grew up with.

-My mom's christmas tree -

The Simbang Gabi (early morning mass) where we buy puto bumbong for breakfast with the family or breakast at Goodah's with friends. The kris kringle at work & with friends with an imposed gift budget. The many christmas parties to spread the joy. The Filipinos truly exhibit the significance of conviviality in camaraderie.

Our christmas & new year's eve dinner's highlight are the Majestic Ham, sotanghon & my dad's famous 12 grapes - 1 grape for good luck each month. Voices of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby fill our house with christmas cheer. The neighbors you meet at church after the midnight mass. The giving & opening of gifts are always moving because we always choose the gifts we give with significant meanings. And the display of fireworks on new year's eve - more noise the better to push away the incoming bad luck. The holiday season in the Philippines is truly cheerful & animated through the abundance of faith, belief & spirituality.

I will probably get a tree for next christmas. I already bought a compilation of christmas songs. Afterall, the spirit starts at home & maybe, just maybe, I am able to spread the joy.

Halloween is one of the holidays I have as much memories as Christmas or New Year. In my younger years, costume parties & trick or treating were not widely practiced so it included the yearly showing of "Gabi ng Lagim" on IBC 13, the candle wax balls & the usual pranks to scare the beejeesus out of you - but it likewise means the gathering of relatives.

It is the day to light a candle & pray for our dearly departed - remembering them even if they are not around anymore - it is a spiritual connection. How did All Soul's & Saint's Day become the spooky pumpkin heads & witches, of black cats & bats & the superstitions?

In the Catholic calendar, November 1 is the time to honor the Saints, thus All Saint's Day. People then believed that the dead visit the earth & started to consider this day as holy & was likewise called All Hallow's Day - now shortened to Halloween. But it is the New Year for the Celtics back in the 5th century BC. The Celts believed that the spirits who died within that year seek living bodies to possess for the next year, this was their afterlife - the Panati. People then made their homes undesirable, they wear dreadful costumes & made loud noises to push away these spirits. Now we have costume parties to actually celebrate life & living, and children trick or treating - only treats but no tricks! Read more on Halloween here http://www.jeremiahproject.com/culture/halloween.html & read on the world's different Halloween yearly traditions at :

http://www.novareinna.com/festive/world.html

http://www.jackolanterns.net/traditions.htm.

My Bonfire Stories

As a child, I have always been scared of the spiritual realm that exists in a parallel time - yes, I believe in demons & ghosts and even if I am still terrified of the other world as an adult, I still continue watching horror movies. Last weekend, I just saw White Noise - a story about EVP, Electronic Voice Phenomenon, a way to communicate with the dead through a simple tape recorder. Apparently, EVP is real & numerous people practice it. To what extent should we believe every human's attempt to unravel the mysteries of the unknown - and probably off limits? I have my own share of encounters with the other world & somehow, personal experiences like this make you always doubt.

Not your kind of Romeo

When I was around 10 years old, I have a nanny with whom I was so close with. She would sleep in my room everyday & we would speak until so late in the night - I considered her as one of my best friends. One afternoon in our shop, our gardener informed us that my nanny is sick & we should see her. One of our maids at home also came & told us that she is being possessed. She was banging her head on the walls, her eyes were droopy with big eye bags - as if she was drugged & just one level below an OD. Apparently, our maid is a bit of a quack doctor & was able to extract information from my nanny. According to her, my nanny saw a "nuno," a dwarf & offered her a "puto," a rice cake which she happily accepted from a dwarf named Romeo, who was in love with my nanny. He got jealous when my nanny was fooling around with our driver & bit her on the the arm. I saw the mark with my own eyes - a black & blue bite mark of a 1 year old, only with complete set of teeth! My parents seeing this, they brought my nanny straight to the church. I couldn't even remember if our parish priest at that time really had the power to excorcise but when he was doing it, my nanny wouldn't say the Our Father & hold the rosary. Of course it was nothing like the movie Excorcist & after the prayers, my nanny eventually came back to normal - just like that, her eyes were awake & the eye bags were gone - she looked around & when she saw me, she said "Oh look, it's Makis..." I ran home like crazy & I was terrified. My nanny never slept in my room after that & I had to camp in my parent's room for months. My nanny & our driver are still married until now with 4 kids. Romeo, the dwarf lives in the tree at the corner of our shop's garden & my brother just told me that they made an offering to the tree. Whatever my nanny had, I think I'd pass for this kind of trip.

Knock before you enter

We were going to stay in a family friend's house in Ilocos Sur for our yearly family getaway. It is normally with my mother's best friends & their families which they called "The 41 Club," a card game they play every weekend. We just came back from the Malacanang of the North when my brother came running out of our room. He said that he was going to use the bathroom & he heard that the shower was on. Before entering, he tried to say hello while slowly pushing the door to see who it was. While wondering who it was when all of us just came back, the shower stopped & the door closed on his face. We all checked it out & the bathroom door is now locked but the shower is still on. Others tried to look on the window from the outside but there was nobody. The helpers of the house said that it was a woman ghost & every morning when they have their breakfast, they would hear the door open & shut & they would just greet her & invite her for breakfast. Well, ghosts still do need their privacy in the bathroom.

Don't sleep!

Back in 1994, my ex-boyfriend & I were invited to stay with our friend at their beach house in Matuod, Batangas. It was off-season so we had the whole beach for ourselves - the 3 of us, my dog, our helper & the concierge. We went to bed at around past 2 in the morning, sharing one room since we were an odd number & my friend already knows some stories. We were awakened by a bottlecap, literally bouncing on the pavement downstairs. We asked each other if we all heard it & tried to go back to sleep. We were surprised that the bottlecap now hit our window, as if somebody threw it & it stopped. This time, we were awakened by the warmth of the room because the fan was off - apparently, somebody was playing with the fan. We didn't really sleep well. Our helper told us that he also had a hard time sleeping because he kept on getting up to turn off the kitchen faucet & the toilet kept on flushing. What's strange is that my dog didn't bark even once for this unknown presence. Bothered ghosts bother.

Our Halloween Decor : Vidar

Happy Halloween everybody!!!

In your life, you probably have moments so potent that it becomes your landscape - a succession of pictures, each one revealing a part of you - a panorama of the person that you have become. In my life, my friends are a big part of my landscape. There are so many moments that still seem like yesterday. These are the moments of multiple attempts in finding our own space in the world by experimenting the details of life together - while we slowly discovered the person that we are & where some of our convictions were shaped.

There's nothing like girl friendship when you're 8 years old. But nothing will compare to friends who grew up together between the playground swings, the pimples & braces, the petty crushes, the bull sessions, the college days of fun & work, the boyfriends, the breaking up & a renewed pink vision of life, building a career, new friends along the way, the weddings, children & all the shebang of growing old & adulthood.

These days, it is uncommon to find friends that go all the way back to grade school & managed to stay together even when juggling the demands of work, family & motherhood simply just takes most of your time. But in true friendships that flourished through time & the many trials of life, there is a silent understanding - almost unnoticed - that in growing up, things can never remain the same. We change by not changing at all.

My friends & I are the kind of buddies where we were like fishes in a big aquarium that never bump into each other but we know that we're all there during grade school. Then there was a quiet sort of regrouping in high

school where you actually bump into the people who actually wants to venture in the same kind of goofy stuff we normally want to do in our short teenage years. We were crazy but we were responsible teenagers who never experienced failing grades (low but not failing for me) & parents invited by the principal. High school is the best time of our life because everything is simply justifiable. Different schools during college just felt like we were all in different aquariums. We evidently met new friends & the circle got bigger & bigger. We used to visit each other's colleges & we kept in close contact. Already at this time, the moments we've shared must have proven to be a profound friendship for each one of us.

After the years of schooling & goofing around, comes the real world - a world bigger than us - bigger than our own little world. A ticket to freedom & responsibility. We still hang out with each other having more out of town trips when we were not in the "bilog," a cul-de-sac of a friend's house where we come to meet even without plans or phonecalls & invitations. But after, we simply get caught with the real world & real issues we naturally have to go through alone, each on the path one eventually chose. It is like the moment when you followed together the decade of the new wave, then into rock, into grunge & in the end, you have decided to stop following the charts & choose the kind of music you really like.

I have seen my friends change from girls to women. From being crazy to being a wife & a mother. I have seen a part of their success in the life they chose. But adulthood, the choices we make & moving on comes with change. Amidst our little corners, the drifting apart & falling out, with the very few moments we touch base with each other, we still see the pictures - the panorama. We can still see it in our eyes & say, "Hey, I know you. We've seen each other grow!" You are all still - and will be - the person that they have always come to know so long ago. And sometimes - in a random moment - you just pick up where you left off.

I miss you guys. I promise when we visit next time, I hope I'll still have the chance to make it up to you & finally free myself of guilt. Especially to the two of them whom I had a big falling out.

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