Coward!

I called in sick today.

This cough has been with me for a week now. I have risen to morning fever and muscle pain for a week, too. Yes, I've come to see a doctor yesterday at 5 AM but not for me, but for my nephew who has been showing the same signs for the last 36 hours. My nephew feels better now. And I still am sick and I'm on my second week. I may come see my doctor later, but then I will feel better middle of the day and I will lose the drive to see the Man In White.

I can come to work today, it being like any other day since this cough virus or bacteria (The doctor will have to say which.) hit me. But I choose not to. Today is mancom meeting, my major stressor. And unless I want to die before I bear a child, I may stay well away from it while sick. For now, my boss makes me sick.

There are things I can tolerate. There are things I can put up with. There are things I can stand up to. But in order to live, one has to be a little coward for small things, a little afraid of worms.

No Apologies

It's been five days. The President has apologized. The DILG Secretary has admitted mistakes. The PNP, too, has apologized. The Filipino people all over the world have apologized.

But we have yet to see and hear the local broadcast media humble themselves, admit their mistakes and apologize.

In the next few days will anyone between GMA 7 and ABS-CBN claim and brag that they had the highest ratings during Monday's hostage-taking coverage as they always do? Showing statistics and percentages side by side the number of deaths?

Will the news readers like Mike Enriquez, Mel Tiangco, Karen Davila and Ted Failon, alongside their field reporters and big bosses, lose the smugness on their faces and own up to Monday's lousy job? Or will they continue to reign supreme on prime time TV as if August 23, 2010 didn't register in the calendar?

But how difficult is it to apologize? Where business takes front seat, Serbisyong Totoo and Panig sa Katotohanan, Panig sa Bayan remain cute slogans masquerading as core values.

Don't Throw Your Pearls to the Pigs

Like Karen Davila, Mel Tiangco and Mike Enriquez. These people talk back and throw wordy daggers at people who criticize media. They have found the weapon and power behind microphones and have been irresponsibly using them so. This has been acknowledged, and disappointingly so, when Noynoy had to send his officials to a seminar on how to deal with media. How disgusting! Who are we pleasing here?

The media, it now seems, find themselves the C-officials in Noynoy's You're-My-Boss government. Don't we notice, media thrive better in governments so rottenly corrupt; the latter are at their beck and call lest they be featured in IMBESTIGADOR?

Media pros in the Philippines are the kings of the world; the messiahs of the underdogs. We almost always go to media personalities than to the police to complain against abusive government officials. We return lost-and-found valuables to radio stations, not to police stations. A product or service that we purchased or subscribed to sucked and we threaten the companies bad exposure to media.

The Mangundadatu's found themselves defenseless, they took refuge in the media. We now know what happened after that.

Ex-police officer Mendoza wanted his job back, hostaged a busload of tourists, paraded them in Quirino Grandstand and displayed his "cause" in front of the media. We, too, know what happened after that.

Now, people are telling media to hold their horses and control their scoop-first mentality, but the stalwarts say we don't know what we're talking about; that we aren't the experts in journalism. Yeah, right. They are the only ones who know their business.

When we complain about the abuses of media, where do we go? No where. So we blog ourselves hoarse instead.

No, we can never throw our pearls to the pigs. They will trample them under their feet.

Backseat Experts

But on Monday, they were just couch potatoes glued to the tragedy that's unfolding like most Cannes films. Surreal with much magic realism. Too real to be real. Everyone suspended their disbelief.

The next day and the next, everyone became an overnight expert on hostage negotiations, on psychology, on tactical operations, on journalism. Forums worldwide raged with brilliant should-have-been's, should-have-done's and should-have-not's.

But last Monday, the world was just watching while hostages die and get killed in color, in crisp CNN, GMA 7 and ABS CBN's HD sound. What do you call people who just watch and let people die, as if it was some gothic entertainment?

When they finally meet their gods and the gods ask, where were they when that happened? What would they say?

Millions of people all over the world were watching when eight innocent people died. Millions of people their hands on the remote, but not tied. If millions of educated, civilized, upright people couldn't stop a single man from committing a coldblooded act, how can the same people stop deep-rooted cultural and religious wars?

Imagine what the victims felt looking outside the bus window, at people gawking at them and the media, both local and international covering the "event." The world is watching, but why are we still here, death coming to us any moment?

That was Monday.

The next day and the next, the couch potatoes became experts, conceived without sin.

I Need to Brag!

Sorry, I can no longer contain it. It happened exactly seven days ago.

(I'm a brag but I'm coming out as a hardcore braggart this time.)

At the University Auditorium of my alma mater.

I was on stage with the university president, deans, department heads, professors, and VP for academics.

The university chorale at the left side of the stage. Students filled the auditorium.

I was the guest speaker.

It was 3 PM. The speaker before me (the university president who talked for 20 minutes) lulled half the audience to Z-land. And I needed coffee lest I fall asleep hearing myself speak. It was a dream coming true. I couldn't ruin it for the world.

My turn. I brought my reliable tiny netbook to the podium with my speech in full screen reading. I needed to see the first line of the paragraphs to give the impression I've memorized all my 20-minute long inspire-the-interns speech. And I couldn't help adlibbing. Argh. Then came the applause. Then the next. And the next. Until I stopped counting.

The audience laughed and smiled and beamed. It was paradise.

The speech ended. And more applause.

My former professors bragged I was their former student. The others wished I was.

They presented me with a certificate of appreciation inserted in the university document jacket. (Later that night, I discovered there was an envelope with money inside. Wha? They even had to pay me for a dream-come-true experience? I was floored!)

I came down the stage and walked past the students in the audience. They stayed put to greet me with a smile as they bowed their heads. Some wanted to say something but was too shy to speak. I wanted to encourage them but the professors around me where talking all at the same time.

Wow! I really, really got it made. Not with material things but with the things that matter.

This morning, the services officer presented me my new Macbook.

For lunch, I'm having spaghetti with chicken romano with white sauce and cream dory in butter and lemon sauce. And green tea.

Life is perfection!

Females, what's with hair?

Ang buhok na walang malay!

From a Yahoo article on Harry Potter's Hermione, Emma Watson's cutting her hair:

"But at 20, the British star seems to be letting go of that image and moving on from the role she stepped into before she was 10 years old (the saga's next-to-the last film comes out this November). And as with most breakups, looks like the inevitable first thing to go is the hair."

Right, so what again is with this "cylindrical, keratinized, often pigmented filaments characteristically growing from our epidermis" particularly on the head?



Is it a matter of cutting one's nose to spite one's face? Or is there really a more profound reason only the Nobel Prize Laureates can explain?

Honestly, I've done the same several times. Poor hair, poor locks, poor crowning glory, poor thing!

You're depressed, therefore, you get a bad hair day. As long as you're depressed you suffer a bad hair day. You look in the mirror and you see your hair a big mess. The hair, not you - a big mess. You're heartbroken. Your hair is limp and dull. But it's your heart that's broken, not your hair, right? Kaya bakit ba lagi na lang pinagdidiskitahan ang buhok?

So perhaps, next time, let's start telling our men, "Oh please, promise you won't break my hair!"

"Hair" definition from freedictionary.com.

As I Lay Dying

One can't talk about death while she is seriously dying. She will be too busy either worrying about life after death or the lack of it or thanking the Lord that the end is near and the beginning nearer.

But death is not always physical. Death comes in every loss. Any loss. Death comes with pain,too. Almost all of the time.

As I lay dying refusing to think of the why's of my decisions, the mistakes brought about by my actions and inactions, I let everything fall freely to crush me. I don't believe in fighting death. I believe in acceptance. No, not abandonment, but the sweet surrender to the inevitable.

It is over. What is there to analyze?

Back on the Driver's Seat

Finally!

I thought sufferings will never end but lo! miracles do happen!

The car looks sleek again. Cursed be the one who dares de-immaculate it!

I'm tired sharing a ride with overweight people who would squeeze me to a pulp in a jeepney that pretends it is an Airbus A380. Perhaps I shouldn't blame the overweight people. But come on! You know you weigh 250 lbs, shouldn't you at least pay for two? Have mercy on people like me who hardly make it to the 110 lbs-mark. And the men! What in heaven's name are you thinking? What seems to be so fragile between your thighs that you have to spread your legs so? If you can't squeeze it in a little bit, then with all humility, you too, pay for two: for you and your thing!

Those among other things.

No, I don't have since-birth driving privileges but when you experience something good, you wouldn't want to go bad.

It is like meeting a perfect guy and losing him. You wish you've never met him so you could sleep soundly at night not knowing there is someone like him out there.

That one is a very poor thought transition. I admit.

But I'm back on the saddle! Yahoo!!

Random Thoughts Ba 'Ka Mo?

Not one less. Chinese film about teaching and education. Mga Munting Tinig. Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Nape aches.

Heavy rains caught my room unprepared. Open Windows = Soaked curtains, bed sheets and pillows.

Salem bed isn't waterproof.

My most recent Ex- requested me to add him as a friend. Ako naman si tanga, in-add s'ya!

At 41, someone died of cardiac arrest at 5 AM and was cremated at 2 PM the same day. WTF!! Didn't he have friends? Family? Did he actually live?

Robin Padilla almost got himself married to Vina Morales, but he got someone else pregnant so he married the latter instead. Very news worthy indeed!