A Day in the Life...

When finally I was of school age, my mother got me back and started living away from my grandfather. It was hard at times to be away from my grandfather since I got so used to be with him. The giddiness and wonderment of childhood might have staid off these longings for my grandfather that I easily readjusted to newer surroundings. When I was with him, I played with my cousins, when I was with my mother I played with my sister and two brothers. Children always play it seems. They were built and created for to play and nothing more that games was like a narcotic to every child's longing and impartibility. Old habits did not die down that in the afternoon, on Saturdays and Sundays, I would earnestly find some solitary moments and played with "unreal" friends. I would climb trees alone and fish with a crude hook and line equipment in a nearby pond. My mother was living in the house of our grandaunt, Hadja Saniya, and it was an old house with a colonial built. In that plac...

Substantial cognizance if I only have, Of the house where you once forgot your name, Intentionally, maliciously or otherwise, I would have spared no minutes nor seconds In order to stand before you and beside you, And thereupon render my pleadings and other inquests, Of which you were certain already even from the beginning And which is a mystery no more. I would have scoured the Earth from all ends, Towards the East and the West, the North and the South; Into the darkest and narrowest of caverns and underground cages, Where fiery serpents slitter and savage beasts dwell, Into every territories of water, into the graying Lake of Lochness, Even into the bottomless pit of the Marianas. I shall leave no earth unbounded and unsurveyed, Untravelled and untresspassed, and no atmosphere unstained By the heaviness of my desire. Be informed finally my dear That I have even summoned all the winged horses in the heavens So that I may reach the farthest constellations, To th...

Not only in these moments that I have pondered the possibility of writing a long overdue requiem for an old friend that had already gone to the netherworld, but also in many other instances before. Maybe I just hadn’t had the time before or maybe the time wasn’t just right. And so now I shall speak of him in the best of manners and as far as my remembrances of him could take. Aziz Vernon Mustapha was closer to me as a brother than as a friend. I met him during our first years in Ateneo de Zamboanga, in a time and place that was etched in my mind like mildew on a rock. He was sweating so furiously one sunny afternoon when he appeared out of nowhere and suddenly sat beside me without any prelude in a Religion 101 class that we had both attended. He kept on scrubbing the area around the back of his neck with a handy towel and that made me a little uneasy. It was the first week of school that year and I panned around the entire length of the room for any familiar faces, as well as a...

Yesterday, we celebrated Yuri’s second birthday at the old but still chic Country Chicken Restaurant near the famous Pasonanca Park. The place hosted a-many events for our family primarily because it gave us the best deal we could ever get in town; affordability, the food is great and the place is just so wide that parents could just leave their kids running around without having to worry about passing cars or unworldly strangers prowling around. We had a grand time and the party was lively enough even though it was on a strictly family and close friends basis. I’ll put some pictures here in the coming days if they come soon. As it was always it had seemed, like mostly what happens, like in the years that passed, Yuri’s birthday was celebrated not on the very day he was born due to scheduling factors. If the day falls on a working day, we have to move it to a weekend date in order that the invited guests may be able come. So much fuzz ain’t it? Ha.ha.ha. I would laugh at myse...

When I was in highschool, Michael Petralba, an old neighborhood friend from Carmen Street but who is now residing in Los Angeles, once spoke to me in a very animated fashion how the Philippines could one day become the richest country in the world. As a prelude, Michael said to me that his father had some vital information why a number of foreigners were in the country for a very secret purpose. I wondered loudly to him how secret it was and asked him if he could actually let me know some of the “secret’. He then informed me without hesitation that the foreigners were here mainly to study and find out ways on how to extract deuterium from the Philippine seas. I asked how come his father knew about all those stuff and what “deuterium” was in the first place. With gasping breath, and with gleaming pride for that matter, Michael told me as a matter of fact that his father was a war veteran and because of this, he had American contacts in the CIA. The CIA thing sounded preposterous to ...

I do not mean re-engineering or even re-structuring . Maybe all we need is merely to invigorate the government system in order for it to achieve  the  maximum efficiency that is expected  of  it. We have tried such modes  of  re-invention as re-engineering and re-structuring, at great cost in time and money, and yet improvements have not been substantial or palpable. The  public  continues to languish in long queues every time a license or a passport is needed. Bribes are ever pernicious, and even more open today, like it is not anymore a secret that should be tucked inside the pocket or a key thrown into  the  deepest ocean. Sadly today, the  public continues to encounter lazy faces of  public  servants seemingly tired of their day job and daydreaming  of  life in beaches almost all day long. At the slightest error, the public who is merely seeking public service get squirmed at by those who are ...