I was a Saint Many Times Over

During college days, between the end of each semester and the time they released the grades, a halo hovered over my head which was then still immaculately full.

Electrical engineering (BSEE) was a tough course and our school, #MapuaInstituteOfTechnology (now #MapuaUniversity), was unforgiving of students with a low weighted average. It gave those that fall below the standard set by the school twice in a row the boot. The EE school boasted of producing the most number of board topnotchers during our time and keeping the status quo was a serious deal. The grading system used was numerical, 1.0-5.0 with 0.25 increments: 1.0 excellent, 3.0 pass, and 5.0 fail.

Each interim took two weeks, and while waiting, we normally go home to Bataan for a brief vacation. It was during these fortnights that I called on all the saints to intercede for me that God will not allow a failing grade. I was so obedient to my parents that I carried out every command before they gave them. The house was always dust-free, the dishes squeaky clean, and the chickens, pigs and carabaos well fed. Any temptation attempting to poison my pristine heart and mind stood no chance. I prayed like hell -I mean, you know what I mean.   

Failing a subject would mean repeating it, re-studying it and, worse, paying for it again. I regarded every centavo spent for our education as a product of mixing blood with sweat and multiplied with hardships. Without a regular family income, second chances were scarce.

When each D-day came, the first thing I’d focus my eyes on was the last line that showed the weighted average. I always know that if it went >3.0, it would mean a 5.0 in at least one subject. In all those times, God heard my prayers.

That was how I survived college -my gateway to becoming a prayerful person.

Cheers! #MyCafeNotes #CollegeLife #PrayerWorks

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It Doesn’t Take Much to Make Me Happy

We were poor. My father was a jeepney driver turned taxi driver turned rice farmer. My mother was a homemaker. Both didn’t finish high school.

My idea of rich people were my teachers because they finished schooling and those who owned 𝘴𝘢𝘳𝘪-𝘴𝘢𝘳𝘪 stores because they have income streams. Candy 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘨 from my father were enough to send us to ecstatic jubilation especially if these were M&M’s and Kraft Caramels popularly known as PX goods from the US Naval Base in Subic where he worked as a taxi driver.

I thought we were doing Japanese or Korean dinners when eating at a 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨 (a low-level dining table). A 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨 is for poor families who cannot afford table legs and dining chairs. No one in the family took mind or questioned why. We were happy to have food.

Our dining experience got elevated when, finally, the bamboo tree had grown tall and big enough to contribute to the household. A real table with legs. No chairs yet. Instead, we sat on long benches on each side of the length of the table. That was fine-dining #michelinstar happiness for me. 

We were not problem-free. Schooling, of course, was the main concern. Elementary school was no prob. We just had to walk. Walk to school. Walk back home for lunch. Walk back to school. Walk back home. In slippers and worn-out shorts and shirts. For high school and college, our parents had to borrow money from relatives and from my father’s farm owners. Happy to have finished school despite. 

I am grateful to my parents, my siblings, and the good Lord for His provisions. I no longer consider myself poor, material things aside. It doesn’t take much to make this balding guy happy.

I am enjoying this simple coffee and 𝘰𝘵𝘢𝘱 biscuits while writing this post.

Cheers! #MyCafeNotes #simplehappiness

The Two Women I was Scared Most as a Child

One was an aunt of my father, the other was her daughter. The mother and daughter tandem of my childhood life of terror were known to us as 𝘈𝘱𝘶𝘯𝘨 Feling (grandmother) and 𝘋𝘢̀ Ción (aunt).

Like life playing tricks on me, their house stood a fence away from the church and just about 150m away from our school which made it nearly impossible not to see them.

𝘈𝘱𝘶𝘯𝘨 Feling had healing powers using her crafty fingers. By pinching and pulling the skin of the nape of sick people with her index and middle fingers, they’d supposedly be relieved of whatever pain they suffered from -like headache, dizziness and erectile dysfunction. I wasn’t sure really. The dark red parallel lines that decorated the napes of her patients were enough reasons for any child to avoid her.

Her daughter, on the other hand, was less quacky. She was a midwife. In our barrio, the midwife was the closest we could get to a doctor or a nurse. And by being so, gave her the license to administer injections. Only a psycho child fancies a needle prick. I hid pebbles (as weapons) by the entrance to our house in case she dropped in unannounced. 

They were the last people on earth that I wanted to be trapped in an island with. The day I left home to study in Manila became my Independence Day from terror.

I don’t remember seeing them again after high school. The older one passed on unnoticed while the younger one married a German and migrated to Germany.

By my beer-drinking age looking back, I knew they meant well and my fear, not really unfounded, was just a part of the stuff every childhood memory is made of. Something that I can now look back on with fondness.

Because I was once a child.

Cheers!

Are You in the Right Job?

Are you in the right job or business? I asked myself.

You may think my nuts are roasting in an open fire that at 61, I still ask myself this question. At this age, matters of retirement, pension and arthritis are supposed to occupy my mind. True that but I am still in the thick of things -I still run a business, I’m learning new skills, I still do short and long term plans. I see nothing wrong in asking.

I do have an answer but first, what if I’m not? I could have been an actor.

When I was in Bangkok the first time in 1986 as a tourist, my tour guide told me that with my good looks, I could be a movie star in Thailand. I believed him. My mother did, too, when I told her the story. Looks and charm, maybe. Guts and spunk, no. I viewed my confidence vs. competence curve as inversely proportional. Also, there were things private that I wanted to keep private. So, pass. I knew then I’d be passing the chance to perform before royalties, eat unlimited 𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘺𝘶𝘮, and make a lot of Bahts! Baht no thanks.

It wasn’t meant to be. Although I did a cameo acting part in a local TV series, that was the start and end of my sparkless show biz career.

I got into the lighting design business for all the good reasons -not only for me and my family, but also for those whose lives, that through it, were made brighter.

Yes, I am in the right job because it’s one of the things that drives me to get up every morning. But I’m not in my #Ikigai yet, I think. I am still working on that one. But for now, I’ll make this day nothing short of brilliant.

Cheers! #MyCafeNotes #whatif

I Drink to That

Turning vegan/vegetarian was my way of 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘶𝘬𝘦 or self-discipline after undergoing an angioplasty.

For the past four years, I haven’t eaten any meat -no pork, no beef, no mutton, no chicken, no hotdogs, nothing that walks or flies or slithers, no wings, no drumsticks, no bellies. The last time I ate meat was during a lighting seminar I gave a big group of landscape architects. Illumined by my talk, the organizers ordered what they may have thought to be most appropriate for their famished guest speaker: McChicken meal. With fries. And ketchup. And coke, watered-down flavor.

My thinking then was if I did, I’d be healthier and live to celebrate Earth day 2121. It did good to 𝘮𝘪 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘰𝘯 but not to my joints. If you’re a vegetarian and aging, with an overloaded level of uric acid, you’re left with nothing more to eat but paper and cardboard food packagings. Life can be unfair.

Yesterday morning, emerging pain in my right-foot toes was telling me I should expand my 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘶𝘬𝘦 further. Without taking any meds to prevent a full-blown gout, I tried good ol’ water therapy. All throughout the day, I took eight gulps off my 1-liter tumbler every 15 minutes, my watch as a timer. That and a hundred trips to the toilet, I consumed 4.75 liters in and flushed a hundred liters down. Our water consumption will rise but dang, it worked! By the afternoon, after work, the littler pain didn’t bother my footing anymore when doing practice golf swings in the garage. Today, there’s more water to chug.

For every problem that sprouts, there is a solution that ain’t in a tablet form.

Cheers! #MyCafeNotes #HazardsOfAging

Strummin' My Life

I was nearly ten-and-a-half years old when I held a guitar for the very first time. Thanks to an uncle who bought one for his son, our cousin who couldn’t put do-re-mi together in the shower or anywhere else for that matter. That guitar landed in our house to find its real purpose.

It was a full-sized, right-handed, classical guitar. Not too perfect for my virgin fingers but left-handed beggars cannot be choosers. With the help of our kuya Boy and a regular supply of #JingleMagazine, all my brothers and I learned to pluck and strum pop songs from #LemonTree to the Beatle’s #HereComesTheSun. That -despite daily fights over who gets first dibs to it. That -to the delight and disgust of our parents.

My guitar skills became my passport to sing in school plays and serve in the church choir. It proved to be handy, too, when doing #harana to my future bride. And as a good daddy, I bundled my good looks with this skill and passed it on to my children. La-la-life, for me, became a song.

And about that poor cousin of mine who couldn’t carry a tune, he became a back-to-back golf champion and drives a BMW and a Benz. Life carried the tune for him.

Cheers! #MyCafeNotes #talkingnonsense

Space Oddity

As a kid, I don’t remember being asked the standard question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Or maybe I may have been asked and maybe, I’ve answered, "Astronaut” because that was what I wanted to be. The #cosmos filled my juvenile imagination that even when pasturing 𝘛𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘨’𝘴 carabaos in rice fields, I entertained my thoughts with riding a space ship and maneuvering through the asteroid belt. Watching #FlashGordon at our cousin’s house after school might have contributed to this fascination.

Even when I was already in college studying billiards and sometimes engineering, I still spent time reading books about astronomy in the library. And through early employment -I gifted myself with a subscription to #NatGeo magazine with my first few salaries hoping that it would feature #Voyager1 and #Voyager2 expeditions. I was disappointed, no space stuff. Never renewed.

During my fist airplane ride out of the country, I thought Saudi was one of the moons of Saturn. I’d work there for just a year which translates to 29 Earth years. That was just fine with me because if I traveled at the speed of light, I would have returned home as a toddler and started over again. If you are confused, think 𝒆=𝒎𝒄².

The farthest I’ve gone 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 is a mere 13kms above sea level. But I’ll get there I know. When that times comes, time and space won’t even matter any longer. I’m not in a hurry, though. This life goes on for me and my cup of coffee.

Cheers! #MyCafeNotes #talkingnonsense