Sweet moments with Ms. B

Every time I get near a structure of any type, whether a monument, a building or a superstructure, I feel some kind of connection, like magnetism… as if it is communicating to me and endearing me to it closer like a person. I cannot explain exactly why but it seems there is a need for me connect to it too, in any way I can. Like… a bridge! For me, a bridge is truly a bridge as its name denotes! It bridges me to an open field that somewhere out there opportunity awaits thus allowing my inner self to indulge with it like I am having some kind of connection from my current settings /situation to the other. It simply enthrals me and put me into some kind of a spell.

My first encounter with a bridge was when I was five 5 years old, in one corner here in Cebu City. I was already in first grade and we (my sister together with my two older brothers) liked to walk down to school using the only shortcut @ the back across it but a big pond was in between. So we traversed that little bridge made of only two (not four) bamboo poles, bonded together with a smooth steel wire-long enough to hold it still for a long period of time- in every foot distance. It had a rail on one side only, also made of bamboo for our hands to hold on to while walking on it. It was suspended more than a foot up from the mud with huge water lilys sprouting all over. I think that bridge was a little over four (4) meters long. We had great times with it. I almost fell one time when I was hurrying up too fast and my left foot slid down; but I did mange to get a grip on the railing and continued my journey to school with dry shoes! It was really fun.

Today, I am in an island with two bridges! This time it isn’t made of bamboo but tempered steel with huge pre-stressed concrete for support and cable on its sides. Isn’t that just fantastic!

First stop : Mandaue-Mactan Bridge. This bridge is quite dear to me because my dad and my two elder brothers were among the many bridge builders (erectors as they are called) employed then to fit those rivets in. It was the first to be built (1973) thus the name and it allowed progress to step into Mactan more easily and freely. It was said that a bridge lasts a lifetime depending on whose lifetime it started and considering some minor renovations /repairs are taken into account every so often.

The next one is the Marcelo H. Fernan Bridge- in honor of our chief justice of cebuano descent. It is located just a little over to the North (Pusok) but barely two kilometers away from the first one. This bridge carries long cables to support it from both sides as most suspension bridges do anywhere else.

Bridges! They simply amaze me all the time! It enables me to breath more freely and cherish this (almost) perfect life i'm having to the max! These huge but gentle structures sit on peaceful waters across the channel, joining two great cities :Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue, sending off messages of camaraderie, freedom and...love perhaps?

There! I’ve said it: Tennis is my game. And I’m quite proud to say I learned it from scratch. I mean, I started out with clinics: The term used in training young children the basics of the game. Basically it means: tennis lessons!

So there I was standing in attention- a 25 year-old married lady together with some 6 other kids whose ages ranged from 6 – 10. Oh yeah! It was kind of fun actually. Amid the heat of an open multi-purpose court -’coz it used to be a basketball court at night too - I stood there wearing my best skirt supposedly-tennis-attire and was doing the forehand and backhand grips, and hit better groundstrokes. I'm now using Head S6Intelligence midplus after my long overdue engagement with Prince oversize carbon.

My personal reason behind why I’m blogging about tennis is the fact that I miss the game so much now. You see, after my hospital encounters last April, I haven’t played it since because my doctors told me so. This tube inside me has to come off first meaning: four months onwards- (after August) but with a condition that no more kidney stones are trapped inside or else, I need to be inserted another tiny tube and wait another four months! Can you imagine how long that takes? You should know for tennis players like me, a week of not playing seems forever! My, oh my! By the way, I hit a few balls in billiards every now and then, and the latest craze here: Badminton.

But i think the best reason of all is simple. I only want to share with you something to aspire for, hoping one could get a grasp if not a glimpse of how it feels like having a sport as a way of releasing the tension of work in our daily routine; and also i was hoping it might encourage our youths of today in learning the game or any game for that matter, for a better sporty tomorrow.

So, you all know my sporty world (or is it), perhaps, you can tell me yours?

Everybody has been talking and blogging about it lately. It's so humongus that it made responses greater than expected! And i had the chance last night of experiencing almost all the concerts performed in my very own bedroom!

Yes! It was aired live in our local TV ! There i was enjoying the simplest comfort of my 20" television and rocked my heart out with Bono himself live in London! WOW! Then it shifted to Japan with Bjork and then on to Rome with no less than Duran-Duran! My my! All my fave artists were singing and rocking and sending the message to the Group of Eight (G8) great leaders who will be having their annual summit meeting on July 6th in Edinbugh, which is aimed at fighting poverty in Africa.

It was up all night 'coz when i woke up this morning and turned on the tv set, Sting was featured with his great song: "Every breath you'll take" (we will be watching you). 'just breathtaking!

Oh, i manged to encode my name in the list and saw it run down my monitor thanking me along with the rest of names who supports this cause. I hope you have done your part too.

(First of a series)

Various sports amaze me more than movie viewing but there is nothing like playing it for real to get the feel of it.

As far as I can remember, I won the 100-meter dash in my elementary days during the Public School Sports tournament or something like that and I was a softball player way back in high school. We were all girls and it made sense playing the game much as I enjoyed the running we did and the cheering dances we get to compete every so often while wearing those very short white skirts topped with sexier-than-ever (in those times) shirts! My mom was an athlete too in her younger days then. I guess I got the genes from her as a sports enthusiast.

Of all the sports I have encountered, I was pretty inclined to the ball games, which made me fell in-love with table tennis. I was so engrossed with the game that I requested my dad that we make our own table @ home for us to practice more freely. And indeed I had the standard table but get this: it was my boyfriend then (husband now) who built it all by himself! Was it real love already? Well, perhaps it was, ‘coz that same table was the presidential table during our wedding!

I M A G I N E ! Opps! I’m sorry, I got derailed there a while.

Anyway, I was an avid fan of the game and still is. But my heart fell (in sports I mean) for lawn tennis when my hubby started playing. And it wasn’t until I married (after my first child) that I got to play and learn it by heart.

Actually, Lawn tennis is quite a complicated sport-@ least for me - given my situation of a full time wife, mother, home maker, landscape artist, electrician, plumber and all plus I took some short courses in computers on my spare hours; but in spite of these I did manage and made it to the women’s finals (doubles) in our local city (LCTC) Lapu-Lapu City Lawn Tennis Club. I had more than a couple of partners every game or two though. Playing this game really demands so much time not to mention great efforts not only physically but mentally too. I remember one time we (my hubby) and i tied a ball up the ceiling and let it hang down in its most appropriate length for me to practice the serve because as the game requires- first serve is your greatest weapon. So there went my sliced first serve. Lately, changed it to a flat one considering my grip is changed too from continental to conventional (flat). I can strike it better now and harder... with a bang!

I trully felt how it is to be a champion when we earned it together with my nurse-partner carrying the club name: MTC (Marigondon Tennis Club) a new one - over the Pacific Cebu Resort (PCR). Oh by the way, I am a very active member of Marigondon tennis Club, with Fr. George Alfonso as our guiding strength and our very friendly spiritual adviser. It is under the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish, one of the promising parishes in our city.



(to be continued)...

Matud nila ako dili angay
Nga magmanggad sa imong gugma,
Matud nila ikaw dili malipay,
Kay wa akoy bahandi nga kanimo igasa.

Gugmang putli mao day pasalig
Maoy bahanding labaw sa bulawan
Matud nila kaanugon lamang
Sa imong gugma ug parayeg.

Dili maluba kining pagbati
Bisan sa unsa nga katarungan
Kay unsa pay bili ning kinabuhi
Kon sa gugma mo hinikawan

Ingna ko nga dili ka motuo
Sa mga pagtamay kong naangkon
Ingna no nga dili mo kawangon
Damgo ko'g pagsalig sa gugma mo.

by Paolo Choelo

I found this while surfing the net, and it really makes sense. I wish i could be strong enought to close one cycle too. I've read some of Choelo's books particularly:"The Alchemist". It made me realize some truths about life. This is not an advertisement but i highly recommend it.

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Had a loving relationship come to an end?
Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Had a long-lasting friendship end all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your h usband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us.

What has passed will not return: we cannot forever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents,lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment."

Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride,incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Don't you think it's just about time to close a cycle now?

Happy Charter Day celebration to all Oponganons!

Snapshots :



More of Lapu-Lapu,the City...

Word games has become more prominent these days. More and more people are into intellectual but exciting ones. But hey! this is not one of them. In fact, this is not even a game! This word stands for: INDEPENDENCE... actually it is more of a short-cut!

Letters may mean one thing and it may mean lots of it too. But in this case, it was intended to display only the significant consonants which did a perfect job for composing such. Actually, it was my daughter who came up with this idea when she texted the word as title to the pictures she took using her mobile phone on that special freedom night.

And three days ago, i took some snapshots of our very own Shrine in Mactan, where my hero Datu Lapu-Lapu stood boastfully.

As my country just recently celebrated the 107th anniversary of its freedom from foreign invaders, rulers, conquerors, etc and what-have-you, i feel i have my freedom through thoughts like these... and mind you, i am enjoying it!

As a way of expressing the joy in celebrating our Independence Day today, allow me to share with you this moment of gladness through this post.

Movies for me eludes one's imagination almost immediately and embeds in our minds a fantasy, which stays longer than your entire childhood. I admit Philippine cinema never really captures my heart, unless the storyline runs classics, stories of war, of love and/or of history. But when I came across this film, it made my mind ponder more and thought I was proven wrong.

The film is entitled: TATARIN. Literally it means – chopping into pieces. But in this film it is portrayed with more than one meaning. i.e. The Filipina freedom of sexual expression, social liberation and least we forget- political awareness. It is where the role of a Filipina is challenged in the sense that, women in the past were merely subordinates to their husbands and has little say - if none at all - of the affairs of the household but cook, clean, nurse the children and serve her mate. This is a highly acclaimed play by our very own national artist Nick Joaquin (1918- 2004) and was made into a movie by Tikuy Aguiluz just recently.

In observance of our 107th anniversary celebration of independence from the ruling arms of the Spaniards, this is my way of dedicating my freedom day as a true-blue Filipina in the 21st century.

MABUHAY ANG FILIPINA!

Related post: Filipina
Note: A poem of mine carefully address this post too. (read on)

Please don't ask me (Martin Nievera)

Please don't ask me what am i thinking
It's about you
And please don't ask me
I never can see you
What can i do
My first impulse is to run to your side
My heart's not free, and so i must hide
Please don't ask me
What i'm gonna say to you
I toss and turn, can't sleep at night...
It's worrying me. I go to bed, turn out the light...
it' your face i see. It only hurts
the more i pretend, that we could ever be more than friends
please don't ask me, why I'm so in love with you.

You could easily make me happy, that I know...
but I try my best to never tell you so.
I will sing to you my love songs, and pretend...
and I'll keep my distance right down to the end.
Please don't ask me why I'm not talking...
I just can't explain. And please don't ask me, why I go walking out in the rain.
I could not live the lie it would take, to have you here would be a mistake.
Please don't ask me...

Why I'm still in love with you? (Noooooo! please don't ask me).