I feel bad about what happened in Japan.
I can’t put into words the emotion that I am feeling.
In my own little way, I guess it’s the right time to give back.
Let’s help Japan.
Category: Life & Love
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Friendship is important to me. I consider a few trusted people as my circle of friend. Jason is one of them. Our friendship has evolved from being too focused on my vulnerable lovelife to discussing financial/investment matters. How well do I know him? Maybe not that much yet as we have a lifetime to discover more about each other’s similarities and differences. The items below are the things about Jason that matters to me.
1. He is a Scorpion like me. I have a hard time remembering birthdays and it’s easier for me to recall a person’s zodiac sign. Jason is a Scorpion like me: passionate, loyal and temperamental. His passion to make good at his profession is something that isn’t obvious to those who doesn’t know him well. Yes, the guy looks easy-go-lucky. His loyalty to those that mattered to him is commendable. I have yet to hear him badmouth a friend or a mentor. Just like me, his moods are unpredictable especially during his younger years. (Thank God I’m past that stage now!)
2. He is one of my BBF (Boy Best Friend). I got the term BBF after watching Richard Gutierrez’s “My Valentine Girls.” I feel comfortable and safe sharing my life stories with him. I think we really got very close during my vulnerable period. He practically saved me from losing my sanity by just being there to “listen.” He was the first person outside of my family to know about me entering into a new relationship, getting engaged, getting married and having a new baby. He’s the only person outside of my family to know about the ups and downs of my career.
3. There was a time when my ex was jealous of him. Don’t ask who among my exes but this ex of mine came to the point of asking me if there was ever a time that I felt I was or at least, I was close to falling in love with my BBF. “Maybe yes maybe no” was my answer. That was an unsafe yet honest answer, I know, and that added up to my ex’s speculation that his gut feelings were valid but for the sake of transparency and truthfulness, “Maybe yes maybe no” was the right answer.
The MAYBE YES: Love is measured in many different ways and I love Jason for being him.
The MAYBE NO: I loved my ex when we were still together and that love distracted me from falling in love with other men. On the other hand, I have always been fond of Jason’s relationship with the love of his life and that prevented me from establishing a deeper, more than platonic relationship with him.4. He is his worst critic. He sees himself as stagnant and average for whatever
reasons. What I see in him is a person who’s trying to achieve most out of life.5. He is a bookworm. He loves information to the point of info overload.
6. It may not show but he is a loving kuya to his siblings. -
Teachers are our second parents, we stay with them most of our waking time as young children. Teachers can make or break a student. Teaching is a noble profession and one must consider it as a vocation in order to be an effective teacher. No, I am not saying that teachers must be sweet. In fact, most of the teachers who are on the sweet side are being taken for granted by their students. No, I don’t want a teacher who terrorizes his/her students. I want the following characteristics in a teacher.
1. He must be intelligent
– I am not saying that he must be Einstein- like. A teacher must be diligent in order to be intelligent. He must study his lessons in advance so that he can answer his students’ questions. If he is an English teacher, then he must be very good in speaking and writing the language. If he is a Math teacher, he must be good in problem solving and computations. Until now, whenever I remember Ms. Yolly Pruna, my grade 4 teacher, I regard her as an intellectual. She’s good in both English and Math. When it comes to Physics, nobody can beat Mrs. Mila Tagorio.2. He must be patient.
– Not all students are equal in intelligence and comprehension. A teacher must know this. In reality, teachers prefer those who are smart and bright. There’s this silent discrimination on the slow learners. Some teachers resort to verbal and physical abuse when a student cannot catch up with the lessons. I know of a teacher who knocks hard on her students’ head whenever they could not understand the lessons.3. He must watch his words.
-Words hurt more than spanks. “Tanga, bobo, pangit!”—these words hurt a student’s pride. But aside from these words, a teacher must refrain from making judgmental remarks.4. He must put in his head that being a cleaner is not a student’s core responsibility.
– Most, if not all, public schools assign their students to do the cleaning. Students clean the classroom and school ground in the morning and in the afternoon. Ms. Flor de Jesus was my teacher in grade 2. She was Mrs. Gloria Castillo’s substitute. My cleaning schedule was twice a week but because she admired me for being hardworking, I voluntarily cleaned everyday! Hahaha! She was the opposite of one teacher who reprimanded me for just standing instead of going to the school ground to clean. I told her that my classmate asked for my help to open the classroom windows that was why I was standing. The window was too big for a 5th grader and I needed to support the other end of the capiz window for her to open it.5. He must be prudent.
-With a number of sexual harassment, sexual molestation and even rape charged against a teacher, parents must get to know the personality of their children’s teachers.6. He must be fair.
– Not every student is pretty, cute, intelligent and rich. Teachers must know that and they must not be the ones implicating those differences in their studenst.
“X is my favorite because they own this business.”
“Throw these flowers (santan given by student A) to give room to B’s flowers (Holland roses). -
If you sense that something is not going well, believe it. Don’t dwell on the possibility that like any other problems, “this too shall pass.” If you think that you need to find your way out of the situation, believe your intuition. If you feel so powerless and fate is not favoring you, gather your strength and look for ways to survive. Nothing can be so depressing than being trapped in a situation that you have no choice. Believe in yourself, have faith in God but most of all, be confident in yourself.
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1. The year was 1998 and cellphones were not quite popular back then. My then bf agreed that we would meet at their house after classes. Both of us were not aware of the typhoon signal. I was at the middle of a classroom discussion when the messenger sent a memo to my instructor that the Dean suspended the classes due to storm signal # 3. A Nepalese neighbor asked me if I wanted to go home with him. I told him that I would be seeing my boyfriend. I took a cab and went to my boyfriend’s house. My then boyfriend was surprised to see me. He said he didn’t expect me to come as he became aware of the typhoon.
2. I could be paranoid at times. My then (2nd) boyfriend and I agreed that he would go to my place after work. I did not eat supper because I was expecting that he would take me out. When it was 9PM, I ate some crackers and texted him. He was not replying. I fell asleep after that and when I woke up at 2AM, there was still no text message from him. I texted some of his officemates to check if he was with them. They said that they left him in the office. I was very worried that something bad happened to him. He was accident-prone and always absent-minded. At 2:30 AM, I decided to go to the office and asked the security guard on duty if he happened to see my boyfriend around. I went to his office and found nobody there. His PC was still warm; a sign that he must have left just earlier when I arrived. I went to the satellite police station not knowing what to do (forgive me, I was just 24 then, easily frightened) Then, I called up one of his officemates and told him that my boyfriend was missing.
“Iris, believe me, he’s just unwinding somewhere else,” he said.
“No, he’s not. It’s very unusual of him not to text me. Could you go here in front of the police station and accompany me to the police?”After 10 minutes, my then (2nd) boyfriend arrived, unimpressed. Hehehe….I should have listened to his officemate that he could be unwinding somewhere else.
3. Miel gave me an engagement ring after a month of dating. I consider it the craziest thing that I did for love. No woman in her right mind would easily accept a marriage proposal from her boyfriend whom she barely knew. But I was in love and when I’m in love, I do the crazy things that I wouldn’t do when I’m not in love.
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I’ve always been a great fan of roses. There’s something in this flower that awakens the romantic side of me. Allow me to reminisce my romantic moments with this flower.
White rose- I got my first white rose from a puppy love if you could call dating someone at 17 a puppy love. His love was pure and intense. We were young. He was ready for a relationship, I was not. He was a gentleman, I was immature. I hurt him many times, he forgave me more than those many times. He set me free when I met my first real relationship.
Red Rose- My first red rose came from a law student. He was seven years older than me. He was experienced, I was a neophyte. He wanted to go back to his youth, I wanted to know how it felt like to be twenty-five. He dated a number of women, slept with them and was still casual with them, I had no experience at all when it comes to relationships. At some point, he nearly took advantage of my innocence, I was lucky to found friends to protect me from him. The match did not materialize. He ended up with my friend. For some reasons, he wanted me to date his friend who was a law student, too. He set up the date for us. Law Student # 2 gave me red roses, too. We went to Camp John Hay. It was very cold that day. He offered me his jacket. I politely refused to get it. He held my trembling hands. Just like Law Student # 1, he was older than me and experienced. I knew that the match would not materialize. Two weeks after that date, I became closer with my future first boyfriend. He was a classmate; snobbish and aloof. Maybe the projects that we did together became the bridge that moved us close to one another. Before I knew it, we were dating. He gave me red roses on Valentine’s Day. It was my first Valentine’s with a boyfriend. A week after Valentine’s, Law Student # 2 visited me at the boarding house. There were red roses on my bed. I was touched. I thanked him and I told him that I needed to sleep.
“See you tomorrow at school,” he said.
After my Technical Drawing Class 2, he was outside the classroom. He offered to carry my T-square. My first boyfriend arrived. Both of them were clueless of each other. I broke my silence, I introduced them to each other. Law Student # 2 was silent. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I was just being honest to my feelings. I was very much in love with my first boyfriend.Artificial Pink Rose- My second boyfriend could me every materials things that I wanted except a flower. It was our first Valentine’s Day. He gave me artificial pink roses. He justified why he gave me an artificial one instead of fresh ones by saying that plastic roses could last forever. Our love story was doomed from the start. It was complicated and stressful. No wonder, we didn’t last. I said to myself, if he would give me yellow roses, the fresh ones and not the plastic ones, then I would stay in the relationship and I wouldn’t mind our differences. I waited for the yellow roses. I waited until the relationship had to end.
Yellow Roses- My third boyfriend and my future husband was short of the qualities that I was looking for in a partner. He was five years my junior and the idea of dating somebody younger did not appeal to me. He was religious, I was an atheist. Okay, to make it less harsh, maybe I was agnostic. But love really moves in mysterious ways. I embraced his religion and did not felf uncomfortable with the 5-year age gap. In my mind, if he could give me a yellow rose, no questions asked, I would marry him. He gave me yellow roses on two separate occasions. That was it, I took the cue and accepted his engagement ring.
My husband loves me to give me roses. The last rose that I received from him was last October, for my birthday. =)
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http://www.journal.com.ph/index.php/headlines/27185-10-workers-plunge-to-death.html
Heartbreaking. Depressing. They were just working.
My condolences to the family of the victims.
The World of Second Chances 