Archive for category Ramblings & Rants

Mama’s Boy

Here I am again battling my demons. No other soul is in sight and I don’t wanna bother mom again with ramblings about the directions I’m heading. She and dad were hoping I’d stick to the plan to finish college and proceed to law school but I’m bored. Bumming is boring and well, it’s unproductive as it’s supposed to be and being a bum wasn’t exactly my original plan.

January to March should have been spent solely on developing my blogs but I got derailed. I got hooked to having people to talk to, being on movie and TV series marathon with people to laugh with and explain why a certain line is supposed to be funny, having to laugh my lungs out instead of just doing it on my head and telling people I’m totally into it by typing in L-O-L or R-O-F-L-M-A-O, and of course, picking a fight with mom just to know that she still enough to fight back.

The things that kept me entertained for a couple of months is starting to get old and now I need to go back to being productive. Back to being a hermit who does not care if people stay away from him even if his opinions are unpopular. I need to take back what I had. I need to be me and be less of that compromising thing who mimics his peers just to be accepted. I need a job which would afford me to do such things and it seems like none is available for me in this part of the world. Too much liberalism scares the hell out of traditionalist. Even speaking out to something that is believed to be wrong is still done only when at the company of close friends with similar beliefs for fear of getting adversarial.

I’ve set my heart to going back to Cebu and settling there for good. College would not be an option anymore and law school is just gonna be like the one who got away.

I know mom knows she could not stop me anymore but I hope she tries harder. She’s basically the reason why I’m back in this town and she’s the only one who can stop me from leaving.

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Anger is Not Just a Strong Word

I’m not an angry person though I spit out angry words a lot. The last time I thought I was angry was when I was still at work and I felt betrayed with our team’s schedule but it turns out it was not really what I thought cause I was still able to act with reason. All reactions were calculated and necessary precautions were carefully laid out.

A few hours ago, at around 1, Manila Time, a neighbor’s niece got drunk again and went through her regular stunts. She opened up the house, which I earlier locked per orders from her aunt as she does not tolerate how she turns it into a motel and occasional drug den, she started shouting on the top of her lungs like she’s back in the middle of the jungles of Cansirong, and worse, she kept banging the wooden wall which separates her shanty from our boarding house.

I should just have left her alone since I go through a similar stunt when I get drunk sans the banging on walls. I sing Insy Winsy Spider or cry over the one who got away until the sandman takes me to lala land. I tried telling them to let others sleep but still she went on and on and even told me to fuck off. At that point, my anger took the best of me so I took a bottle of Tanduay and smashed it just outside the back door but she kept on doing her thing and then banged harder, I could not really take it anymore so I opened the window, and said “Hoy Saba kay naay natog”. I said that using my macho tone, by the way. I can’t really remember what she said but I took it as personal attacks and she even said, no one can stop her because she’s at her house. I took it as a challenge so I hurried to get the assistance of barangay tanods.

Two of them came, and as we checked the house, they were already silent until the drunken 19-year old lady came out and started screaming again. We politely asked her to go back to sleep but she just had to throw a feat. She reminds me of myself that way and I was really amused with her in a way. But then she started pointing fingers at me and accusing me of oppressing her because we are better off and that I am more noisy than her cause I use the Internet and my friends come over. I just had to rebut and do it with sarcasm even though I knew it’s unwise to pick a fight with a drunk woman. She then turned her attention on the boarders and went inside the house and refused to get out and I got furious! She pointed a finger at me one more time and it landed on my upper lip and I thought it would bleed since her fingers were sharp so I punched her on the arm. I don’t really know if it was hard but I hope she’s alright. She started picking bottles after that so the Tanods decided to call up the police.

The police came and took her in cause they too can’t control her. She was really wasted but she said she isn’t as 6 bottles of Tanduay can’t get a woman drunk. She must have started drinking at age 10 for her to have that alcohol tolerance level. It all ended at around 3 AM but I still can’t sleep. My BP was 140/110 when I checked and I just had a hard time sleeping. I was also blaming myself for all that happend. Had I risen above her challenge and took a walk, it would not have blown out of proportions. I’m used to drunk neighbors. Riza’s dad used to do it a lot when we were just a door apart and I just let it pass in the hopes that they would also be as tolerant when I get drunk and noisy but this is different, I had to be a good care taker for the boarding house and I take responsibilities seriously.

I still regret getting violent even if it was retaliatory. I loath the fact that I have violent tendencies when I am angry but I also feel better in knowing that I can still feel remorse for doing things out of anger.

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What’s Cookin’?

Took another break from blogging in order to pursue cooking and baking. Had I mentioned this in the 90’s I would easily be branded a sissy since cooking and baking was generally a girls hobby back then but thanks to career opportunities for chefs and cooks abroad, it’s not so gay anymore. I don’t really mind being labeled for anything now that my skin has grown protective scales.

Since the last time I’ve been detailing how certain I am that Maasin City, Southern Leyte will not be hit by the Tsunami which was over-hyped by the media as well as my paranoid neighbors, I’ve been spending more time reading other blogs than writing here in mine. I was into food blogs specially those that caters to the Pinoy palate and was able to make spring rolls, vegetable lumpia, pork siomai, cheese sticks, pastillas de ube, yema tropicana and baked a very moist banana cake which involves freezing the cake after taking it out of the oven. I’m cannot really consider myself a novice on cooking and baking since I’ve been raised in a home with a sweet grandmother who took up home economics in college and has a knack of practicing culinary arts up to the day she passed away. My mom cooks too and bakes when she has time  and I can turn the worst dish into ambrosia. So much for tooting my own horn. I earn cents from these culinary adventures as I let mom sell the extras at our farm.

The blog is still generating steady income which is the reason why I still am in-between-employment right now and refusing to look for a job but it all changed when a former colleague called me up and offered me one. I’d be working for the government again and this time for the tourism office. I don’t really know when the start date is but I’m already excited. The pay is not that much though but it’s not a problem as long as I have Internet access.

I guess I have to end here. Gotta clean up the house. Mom is coming.

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Tsunami from Chile to Hit the Philippines

I’m from Southern Leyte, a province in the Philippines included in the list of places that the Tsunami from Chile could hit. Like me, a lot of my Facebook friends are still up thanks to a text message that has been passed on since they heard the news that Southern Leyte is a possible tsunami target. Unlike them though, I’m now calm after I sought for information from the various corners of the Internets.

According to the news, the tsunami from Chile would hit the Philippines from 1 to 2:30 PM so I’m confident that if it actually happens, a lot of people would be spared as they are conscious. The news also mentioned that the government is not admonishing people to evacuate as the height is still yet to be known and is expected to be just around 1 meter to 3 meters which is not really a big deal.

The world’s strongest earthquake which happend in 1960 in Chile was around 3 meters to 13 meters high and killed 32 people from the Philippines. The latest Chile earthquake is not that strong and is just expected to wreck a lot of havoc in Hawaii. Don’t worry about Hawaii though as they already have a state-of-the-art tsunami warning infrastructure and is now evacuating lots of people to safer places.

I still feel a bit concerned about my relatives who are living in the Pacific areas of Southern Leyte which could definitely feel the waves, as well as Limasawa which is only a small island where most of it’s people are living at the coastlines.

Filipinos, specially the ones from Southern Leyte are religious and I may not be into that whole thing but I believe that if prayers were able to take down a powerful dictator in EDSA before, it also has the power to keep the Filipinos safe from this Chile tsunami. If ever I’m wrong though, then this might be my last post.

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Meet Maasin City’s Urban Health Champion

Urbanization is one of the greatest health challenges in the 21st century according to the World Health Organization. Based on their statistics, 6 out of 10 people will be city dwellers and by 2050, it will be 7 out of 10. The speed or urbanization, specially in developing countries such as the Philippines, has outpaced the government’s effort to build support infrastructure that can ascertain the optimum health, safety and security of its citizens. This might not seem like a real threat for us Maasinhons as we see more people leaving for Manila, Cebu and even to other cities abroad but we are getting there more sooner than later and we definitely don’t want to get caught with our pants on the ground when it happens.

With the assistance of the Department of Health and the World Health Organization, the city of Maasin intensified it’s Healthy City Initiative program starting with the strict implementation of public health and sanitation laws and ordinances, anti-drug campaigns, sports activities, as well as public awareness campaigns against unhealthy lifestyles. This would not have been possible without the hands-on leadership and political will of Mayor Maloney Samaco who made sure that this program is well funded and adequate man power is provided for sanitary evaluations as well proper enforcement.

Mayor Samaco has always been in the forefront of the Healthy City Initiative even when he was still the vice-mayor of the city and chairman of the Maasin City Sports Council, which he established to promote healthy lifestyle and instill discipline among the young people of Maasin. It was also during Mayor Samaco’s administration when the law against smoking in public places was strictly implemented throughout the city. To show that he means business, the mayor even went the extra mile and conducted an anti-smoking seminar to city hall employees who are smokers to help them quit the habit.

For his unwavering commitment to make Maasin a truly healthy city, Mayor Maloney Samaco is nominated as Maasin City’s Urban Health Champion in connection with the 1000 Cities, 1000 Lives Campaign of the World Health Organization, a healthy city advocacy campaign in connection with the 2010 World Health day.

If you believe someone else is deserving to be called an Urban Health Champion, all you have to do is create a video clip telling us why, just like above. You have to upload it to youtube then send the link to whd2010@wkc.who.int . Upon internal review at WHO, your entry would be posted to the site.

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