8 Things I Want to Do Before Going Back to School

In a year or two I am planning to go back to school to take my doctorate degree. I graduated masters last 2009 and is missing school. Before going back to road less traveled, I want to do the following:

1. Read the Hunger Games Series.
2. Learn PHP programming
3. Learn Java Programming. 
4. Have 1000 posts in Math and Multimedia (has already 719 posts as of this writing).
5. Go back to my elementary school and deliver that long-awaited graduation speech. 
6. Go mountain climbing.
7. Join a 10k marathon. 
8. Learn to cook other dishes other than sinigang and prito.  

That's the list. I hope I can achieve them before I bury my head in books again. 

A Letter for Healing

This is an email I wrote to a friend about three years ago. 

Dear ******,

Good day. I had been contemplating regarding what you shared and I decided to write this letter.

Life is a miscellany of peaks and troughs, and as we all know, it is not a fairy tale which always has a happy ending. As we grow old, reality becomes more and more blunt and painful. As we mature, we realize that all we believed when we were young are not entirely true; all things were not really created bright and beautiful. Please do not be discouraged, however, to look at the positive side of everything. Remember that we shouldn’t be fault finders. There is goodness and kindness in everyone. We should not pass judgment no matter how rude or unpleasant they may be, no matter how much pain they have brought us, and no matter how big their blunders are. We, ourselves, have our own shortcomings and imperfections.

Do not waste your time dwelling in hatred and animosity. Do what is good and just, forgive those who have wronged you, and love without waiting for anything in return.  Be humble, touch people’s lives, make a difference, lower your expectations of others,and increase your expectations of yourself.

There's No Place Like Home

This is a repost from my old Friendster blog.

Last April (2010), our team was invited to train teachers in Iloilo, the place where I grew up (Did I?). I was the youngest among the group, so most of the time I had to stay when only few trainers were invited. For some Divine reason, that time some of my colleagues could not go, so I thought that maybe it was high time to go home. 

To make the story short, I found myself toting my traveling bag under the heat of the scorching sun in Pototan, a small town 30 kilometers south of Iloilo City, and 8 kilometers or thereabouts from our barangay. I was accompanied by my nephew who fetched me from the venue of our training seminar. We found a parked jeepney bound to the Palanguia, and waited almost an hour sweating, sighing, and talking to other passengers until the jeepney was full and was ready to go. 

We traveled 8 kilometers in a miscellany of asphalt and rough roads sniffing fresh air and sometimes dust. I spent the entire trip looking at the roadside conjuring wisps of the remaining images from my memory, trying to see if the things I remember were still there. Many things have changed, and many of which I remembered did not exist anymore.

After reaching my cousin’s house, my nephew took the tricycle to fetch me home. We needed another one and a half kilometers of rough road travel – the road that I walked in my 6 elementary school years every day from home to school and vice versa. 

When I arrived at our barangay, I moved from house to house, shaking hands with former neighbors like a candidate, embracing kins, patting backs, saying “How are you?” pretending to recognize them all and then later asking my nephew “Who was that?” when we were far. I tried to talk spontaneously in the native tongue asking and answering questions. I realized that my Ilonggo was not impeccable, but still excellent – enough to converse despite the fact that I have not spoken the language for seventeen years.

I visited my classmates, teachers, and my friends. I was reunited with my arch-academic rivals, and we talked and laughed about the good-old-quarrelsome days when we were young in our battle for academic supremacy. We talked about the good things. I told our valedictorian that we should catch up and really be close friends now, since I supposed that we took the academic competition “seriously”. 

Sshhh…. The truth is you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Haha… Just kidding.

At the airport, on my way back to Manila 

Sitting comfortably in the plane, I took a lingering stare outside the airport, wondering when I would be back again. It was time to leave, and it was also the time that I realized how I missed home. It’s been ages since I left Iloilo – seventeen long years – without ever visiting. 

I followed the slithering beads of rain on the window with my index finger and muttering unconsciously:

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

Farther

A poem I created last December 2010.

FARTHER

Push it farther

Little by little, step by step

Until  it reach the edge

And fall into the cliff

Let it die

Let it be forgotten

Make it fall into the abyss

Unheard and unspoken

The Square Root of Three

This is an Amazing Poem by David Feinberg. 

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

The Fruit of One is the Fruit of All

For several years, our institute has been accepting interns from universities in Japan. Last year we had one from Hiroshima University.  For the sake of anonymity, we will call him Mr. J.

MAR

Mr. J is a Malawi national and is taking up MA Mathematics Education in Hiroshima Univeristy. .  He stayed here in the Philippines for five weeks to gather data for his masters thesis.

On his second day at our institute, we told Mr. J to buy food at the canteen. We are usually having our lunch together, talking about potpourri of topics – dogs, diabetes, and most of the time, the dismal state of math education in our country.

After eating,  ate Lydia (ate is the Filipino word for older sister), one of my colleagues, picked the banana and divided into four saying “here, the fruit of one is the fruit of all.” We do this every time. Each fruit is divided into the number of people eating. Mr. J just stand there looking at us puzzled. He told one of our colleagues before he went back to Japan, that he had never seen anything like it — that in his country, “if you want fruit, you have to buy one.”

Before leaving for Japan, Mr. J told one of our colleagues about his good experiences in the Philippines and the Filipinos. He lost his wallet, but a day after, it was returned to him. He was brought to the house of one of the strangers he just met in a mall and was invited for dinner.  He told us that “the people everywhere were very warm” and that ” he was getting used to staying here.”

The most important thing that happened to Mr. J (my perspective) was knowing about Manny Pacquiao. (The guy does not know Pacman. Can you believe it?). He watched a few Pacman fights, and he instantly became an admirer. Before he left, I gave him a DVD of the Pacman’s famous fights. I told him, “In there, you will see how a short guy beat up bigger guys.”

A funny letter

Letter home from school...

Dear Dad,

$chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of anything I need, $o if you would like, you can ju$t $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you.

Love,
Your $on.

A week later..... a letter from "home"

Dear Son,

I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep even an hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can never study eNOugh.

Love,
Dad


Source: http://deardad.pen.io/