Although it's a fact that every human being will eventually kick the bucket, hearing the news that Michael Jackson has just died still blew my mind off. He had left no trace of sickness. Nor had he given hints of physical deterioration, except of course the natural effects of aging, which the King of Pop said to be afraid of. On a bed worth perhaps more than the price of a high-end car, he just suddenly ceased breathing, and before anybody could give any idea what was going on, he died. At 50, with a teen body that executed lots of crotch-grabbing, moonwalking dance moves, and a child-like facade which caused him more troubles than praise, he suddenly went away, without a warning, to the place where, who knows, someone might finally come to understand him...
Last Sunday was Father's Day. Most of people who know my philosophy would say I don't really care about this US-made occasion. Partly correct, partly wrong. I don't give a damn about an occasion only when I have nobody to celebrate it with and when I'm asked to celebrate it only on a particular day. What I'm trying to say is that there are 365 days in a year, and if people unanimously decide to observe it in a particular day, why not? We could have celebrated Father's Day in Lenten season, but of course for obvious reason we decided to do it on Sunday.
But honestly, I don't even know if it's really time to celebrate my being a father. My only fame to claim at the moment, so to speak, is that I do have a child. I don't want to believe that it's what makes me a man. Because if it's so, what makes me different from any other guys who think having children is the way of macho?
Back in the days, I had this “curious” anxiety about something which a normal guy my age wouldn't waste time entertaining in his head; that is, how to raise a child. I've seen so many fathers who lost themselves in failed marriages, financial mess, vices and other things I wouldn't want to be in. The first thing that suffers the most is their being fathers to their children. How can these things stop man from becoming a good father when becoming one doesn't depend on such things? I wonder.
Then again, I'm still a novice when it comes to this field of life. I have never been there. I can't compare my months of becoming a father to the decades of ups and down that they have been through. I still have a long way to go to say I've finally done what I had and wanted to do. But right now, thinking of what might go wrong torments my head already. What would become of my child a couple of years from now is still a question mark that would continue to chase me and my wife.
I thank my father for raising me to become the person I am today. If there are role models to emulate, my father should come first and be placed on top of my list. He may not be the “coolest” dad who knows the ways of his son's generation, but he has had his share of being the best when everything else is going bad. Of course, having been a teen like anybody else, I had my own stories of rebelling against something which I thought I understood. We had our times when we were soaked in idealism, when we wanted to correct which we deemed were wrong, when we thought nobody had any idea what we were going through. I thought I had surpassed the knowledge of the preceding generation. Instead of immediately swatting my beliefs and bombarding me with the usual preach, he would exercise his usual passiveness, much to my embarrassment. He would say a word or two about what he believes is right, but wouldn't nag me to do this or that. He would continue doing his fatherly obligation, going on to give the best part of him through our needs. And suddenly I'd just ask myself if my know-it-all attitude warranted any recognition at all. I'd been lazy and all while my father threads through life to give us what we need to become good persons in this world. Seeing my father's sagging skin, his thinning hair, his wrinkled face while eating dinner with my mother---and sometimes, alone---I wish I could have been more worthy a son to him.
I realize that I'm a part of the cycle of fatherhood. Once a son, I'm now a father. I now worry about what might happen to child in the years to come, perhaps the way my father worried about me many years ago. I know that a large chunk of what he will become lies in my hand. I could only wish to provide my child everything he needs and to teach him what he needs to learn. Having a child won't make me a real man; raising one will. But I guess until I am able to see my son becoming a grown man, a responsible citizen and a loving husband to his wife---will I tell myself that, finally, I am a real father.
Just over a year after we became a family of three, things that need to be done and fixed, whether they occurred or envisioned, have been piling up. Minor stuff that we ignored in day two are now surfacing like wild grass around the house. The wedding photos, the baptismal album, the papers and certificates, the mothballed online business, etc.---these are enough to really make our heads spinning... and eventually, our pockets burning. And recently, we just came up with another plan! Whew! Had it not been for our baby who gets cuter everyday (haha! biased?), things would have become a real mess. We can no longer do the things we used to do back in the days (I've already warned April about marriage, but she stood resolute for it... or way too stubborn, perhaps). No more this, and no more that. Truly, becoming a parent is a demanding responsibility. Not that I or many other married couples out there complain about it. These things make up for an exciting and challenging life. It's the same with having a commitment and surrendering what you have and what you can become to the persons you love, and it's a risk that you are willing to take to become as happy as you can be. I am one of those who are more than glad to have taken that risk. Otherwise, I might have stayed confined in my aging shell and is just contented surviving everyday.
At present, we still don't have a realistic plan to get all the things done and clear our heads of those trying to snatch our attention. But I guess we'll just have to let those stuff pile up in the meantime. We're too busy "creating" moments and we can't really let these spoil the fun. ^_^
This is too late. Michele, Gab and I wish to thank all our friends and families who came over to grace this once-in-a-lifetime occasion. I couldn't attend to all the visitors for obvious reason. But I do hope you enjoyed what we had prepared. Till next time, probably after two years or so, when our second baby comes. ^_^ Thanks a lot!
Call all the gods and saints. Get advice from Feng Shui experts. Better yet, have your palm read. Do all this in the name of a get-rich-quick scheme. With a winning probability of maybe around .000000001% (even this is a wild guess), you'll surely need a lot of luck to hit a lotto jackpot. But then again, you only have P20 to lose, and probably few calories to consume while waiting in a long line of desperate-to-become-rich individuals like you and me. Yeah, you and me. Admit it.
As of today, the jackpot for the 6/49 lotto has reached P288,146,473.20. Nobody was able to correctly guessed the six number combination yesterday. Lucky us. By Sunday, it is expected to reach a record P300 plus million, thanks to all of us who continue to jack it up with our self-proclaimed winning combinations. Wow. P300 million. That's crazy. If I win, I would buy a helluva lots of properties, from condos and lands, to buildings and farms. I would buy resort islands. I would buy houses overlooking a city and ocean. I would buy stocks from companies (by the way, Meralco's stock value is soaring). I would everything. DREAM ON, BABY.
I have to place my bets earlier. It's gonna be a wild chase to the lotto windows. I remember the time I failed to place my bet when I had taken too much time thinking of the winning combination. It sucked big time. Good thing the numbers didn't appear in the winning combination the following day. Otherwise, I would have never forgiven myself.
Let's wish fate had different plans for all of us. To those who discourage you to bet, tell them to shove it and back off. I don't think playing lotto will ever become a vice, nor an addiction (since there is really nothing enjoyable about it other than the thought of winning it). Lotto is just a platform of hope, a rudder to a dream, an escape pod from a torture ship called reality.
Can money buy everything? Of course not. But who wouldn't want to have enough to buy ALMOST everything you want?
On December 29, 2008 at 9:48pm, Gabriel Enrico, our first child, was born. His cry was the most beautiful cry I ever heard in my life. So fragile, so delicate. He was a sight to behold! He was the fulfillment of a dream my wife and I had weaved through the years. Suddenly, we felt so complete. It was the moment when all you want to do is stare and smile at that little angel and wish he would already know how much he means the world to you. His coming into this world really blew us away. We love him to death and our life is his forever! Our cute little angel named Gabriel
I don't know if it's me or my surroundings but it appears I'm losing the enthusiasm to blog as often as I used to. It's not that there's nothing to write; far from it. Oh well, some friends say that most of us get this "blogging crisis" thing. Or sawa na kaya ako? Siguro, I just don't have the time to type the words...
It's been a week now since I left my "comfort zone." Luckily, I have managed to get by on my own without fretting about the adjustments that I would have had to make. Perhaps, I just exaggerated it. Maybe it's not really a toxic place to work in after all. Especially if you are certain that you are a human and not a machine, and that you don't give a damn about an unrealistic goal.
Over time, as we keep on doing the same stuff and get the same rewards out of them, situations inevitably snowball into a zone where one always wants to be in --- comfort. A feeling of freedom from worry or disappointment and a life of ease, that is. Has the time for me to move on and try different things for the benefits of not only myself but of my loved ones as well arrived? Maybe. I know it's risky, the feeling of getting out of your comfort zone, but as they always say, each of us must make our own way in the world. But what if I get things wrong? What if I mess up? What if I make a blunder? Frightening, it really is. But if I always stay like chicken and try to stay clear from all mistakes by sticking with just a few “safe” ways, I might miss out on most opportunities as well. Besides, it's not just about ME anymore. It's about my loved ones. "Completely liking" what I do should be the least of my concerns now, shouldn't it be?
If you are a big, die-hard ABBA fan, you would forgive the old-fashioned corniness and sentimental excessiveness of the film Mama Mia. But if you are not... well... If not for my wife who had been nudging me to watch the movie, I wouldn't have gone to see this flick. There were four main reasons I could bring up on the table. First, there's Pierce Brosnan singing and, errr, dancing. Second, there's this whole who-is-your-daddy plot, which has been resolved now with DNA testing, and is therefore so outdated and deserved to be shelved inside an old library. Third, its being a jukebox musical — the kind of shit which I have never been into. And lastly, it coincided with the showing of the Dark Knight, the hyped film I really want to see in a Dolby Digital theater. But since the tickets we had were give-aways, I told myself that we've got nothing to lose. That was correct. But hell, I GAINED NOTHING, either. Filmed on a Greek island that only needs a little earthquak to have a word "tragedy" attached after the country's name, Mama Mia is a story about an independent unmarried woman (Meryl Streep) and her soon-to-be-married daughter (Amanda Seyfried) whose father might be one of the three men (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard). Sandwiched by a pair of trying-to-be-cool-but-looking-like-a-fool women (Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) with whom she once formed a pop trio whose name I cannot recall and don't care about. The mother finds out that her daughter invites her three possible fathers in her wedding. What follow are subplots that take the moviegoers back in time when the mother was still a flirt in her hippies days. And so on, so forth. Conclusion? It's a boring rendition of rehashed plots which the screenwriter tries hard to fit in with the ABBA' songbook. Which takes me to a question: what is "Chikitita" doing in the story? I don't have to be a dancer to know which dancing is graceful and which is not. I wanted to close my eyes and sink into my chair every time the surfing dudes and dudettes shake their bodies; what they do are all "Greek" to me. Did you really see them dancing, I mean, really dancing? Or maybe you saw them jumping instead? And, perhaps, tumbling? Did you see the parts when they leap into the water at the end of the songs? What are those all about? Did you even notice how it was a torture for Brosnan to sing? And why does Colin Firth suddenly unleash his homosexuality at the end of the movie without any warning? Fortunately (or the contrary), I had my moments of laughing. And they happened every time I reached the orgasmic state of accepting your fate for two hours inside a moviehouse packed with screaming, Streep-Brosnan-obsessed oldies. Talk about pain in the ass. It was like SOS. Get me outta there!
A gentle and loving species of nuts dabbed on unpredictable absurdity. A half-baked Utaku. An inquisitive half-human, half-spider living in a webbed corner of the Philippines. A self-proclaimed guitarded. A scribbler of nutty ideas.
Our cute little angel named Gabriel
