Reliving the Good Old Days

The busyness nowadays made me long for a simple life like way back during my pre-school years when I was still in Iloilo.I spent most of my time with my three male cousins – flying kites in rice fields, hunting fighting spiders in the woods, playing hide-and-seek in the tangle of trees and bushes around our house. We would spend hours in river bank sitting in tree branches with our naked feet dangling touching the water, throwing earth to the water and watching the ripples fade.When we were in high spirits, we would skim the water with pebbles and compete who could make the most number of skips, or at times prove our manhood by competing who could pee the farthest.Sometimes we would bring used mosquito nets and sweep the shallow part of river for fish and shrimps. Those who are adventurous enough would grope the holes for small crabs, and those who are very cute sometimes get pinched and end up having long naps under the shadow of mango trees.

If rain comes, we would bring fish poles since the water is high with brown slippery earthworms as baits.If I remember that moment, I shudder and could almost imagine the agony of earth worms as they shrink and wiggle once we cut their slender bodies into three, and pierce them with fish pole hooks. We would stand like scare-crows without moving afraid that the movement of our shadows would scare the fishes, holding our poles and moving it slowly right to left and vice versa, like a pendulum, waiting for the fishes to bite. Once the string of the pole jerks, we would yank it, and behold, a cat fish is shaking wildly and hanging on the hook.

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.