I DID IT!!!
July 16, 2006whooopeedoo!!!! i just finished playing prime suspects!!!
Sorry…but I can't contain myself! hihi!
Death Encounter
Life is really unpredictable. 2 weeks ago I was celebrating my successful monthend with friends then after 3 days, I had a terrible headache, which persisted for days that became a week and somehow sent me calling on doctors. I’ve been to 4 doctors in all and their reactions were quite alarming. The look of perplexity in their faces is so obvious that I was taken aback. But the biggest shock came when they told me that I am showing symptoms of brain tumor.
Brain tumor???? I felt like I wanted to faint the minute I heard the word. It felt like my whole world was suddenly changing and I can’t keep up with it. Thoughts of my family and friends; my dreams, which will remain as that; my career, which will soon end; the husband whom I haven’t even met yet and the lovely children we would not be able to produce anymore flooded my head.
The imminence of death suddenly changed my whole state of mind and lineup of priorities. I thought of what was really important to me. I forgot about work and didn’t mind my Vietnamese boss who seems not to care about anything but my tasks at the bank. To hell with them, they can survive even if I die right this very minute. I forgot about my littlest worries like having my hair permed again and my eyebrows done. I thought of my dearest family and friends and how I will make them ready for what’s to come. I thought of all the things I so wanted to say to them and make them feel but somehow never got the chance (or more like never having the guts) to show them.
Surprisingly, the thought of death didn’t send me running. The fear that was always there when death is around the corner didn’t come creeping inside me. In my mind, I was already trying to maximize the time that’s probably left for me to make my life here in this world worthwhile and meaningful. If they find my tumor to be malignant, I would ask my family for me to be left untreated. I don’t want to spend my remaining days in the hospital trying to wait for a miracle to happen that will keep me alive. I want to spend the last of my days with my family and friends laughing with them, sharing stories, making more memories and enjoying each moment I have with them. If time permits, I would love to go somewhere serene with them. I don’t care how far or much it would cost. I would spend my insurance money doing the things I want with the people I love. I don’t want to see tears. I just want laughter and peace and love.
I had my MRI results. Thankfully, I don’t have brain tumor. Maybe my brains just wanted to have a pictorial. On a serious note though, I am thankful for the experience. I learn to appreciate death and the other things in life that we tend to set aside for silly woes of everyday life. Yes, we need to work to live. But we don’t live to work. We, specially those working in big companies, tend to forget that there are more important things in our lives that we need to invest time in. We need to strike a balance in work and personal lives. Remember that those companies and businesses will outlive us all and they will go on surviving even if you died and left all the work undone. We have more important assignments in our personal and spiritual lives that need to be worked on continuously that will give us valuable lessons that will live on until the end of time.
Death is not a scary thing after all. Given a choice, I would want to know beforehand that I am dying so I can do the most important things that I tend to forget when things are normal.
alien to their world
July 4, 2006Last Friday night, we went to Mall of Asia for our week/month ender night out. We were supposed to be there early to window shop and see what’s new but Kim and Ana experienced some glitches in their allocations at work that I had to wait for them til 11. Ends up, only 5 of us were left for the night out. While watching those kids romp around the mall, I was thinking, is this the new trend that I failed to catch up to? Am I really too old not to be able to appreciate such kind of wardrobe? Is it me who’s weird and was left too far behind? But man! If that’s the “IN” thing, I’d rather be out of style and proud to be passé! Besides, I never let myself be dictated on the latest fashion trends that the French or whosoever designer tries to put in the rage. I’d be ME through and through!
We went to Bed Scene. It was nice and cozy there and we had very good seats, luckily for us. The service was quite fast for a full-packed club and the food was fairly good. Or maybe we were just hungry. Haha! Twas one of those laid back nights, simple yet still fun. Well, everything’s fun for us naman basta me camera!!! 
Fete de la Musique was being held that same night at MOA (short for Mall of Asia! Syet! Pangit! Parang memorandum of agreement!). Actually, that’s what we initially planned on seeing. A friend of a friend of an officemate (layo!) told us about it. Kme naman, hearing the title, e go! We thought it was some French event where some bands from all over have a showdown of some sort.
But no! We were wrong! It featured bands indeed. Actually, it’s more like several bands playing different genres of music. They were all local bands, which wasn’t bad at all because I love OPM. Several stages were set up mallwide so each genre gets to have a certain area for themselves so the different groupies wouldn’t clash. Thinking about it, the idea sounds cool. But when we saw the people who attended the event, we were so damned scared! There are numerous groups of youngsters and not-so-young alike who were dressed in black. Not that I’m not used to seeing rockers in groups because I went to UP in college and that’s a normal sight for me. But in this case, what shocked me is the fact that their get-ups are something you wouldn’t see in an ordinary day. I felt like I was a gate crasher to a Hogwarts party. Most were in black shirts, fit as in skinny baston pants, chucks, hair all over the place if not dread locks, who look like elves to me. There were those dressed in uncoordinated patterns and colors like red checkered polo, puruntong shorts with vertical stripes in different colors, socks with yellow and gray horizontal stripes and black chucks. Imagine that?! And to think we saw more than one person wearing that kind of outfit! Somebody was wearing a gas mask (as in the one used in wars! Where the hell did they get that I don’t have the slightest idea!), another was carrying a grande bottle of red horse beer right in the middle of a throng and passing it on to his comrades, and yet another who was wearing a makeshift hawaiian skirt out of what-used-to-be jeans and wearing nothing but briefs underneath. We felt so out of place! Hello?! Like why didn’t somebody tell us to wear costumes for the event?! No offense meant to the people who were there. But it was a shocking thing for me. I wish we took pictures of the groupies but we didn’t dare! We were so afraid of getting ganged-up. It was so obvious that we don’t belong with the bright colors that abound our bodies. Everyone was literally staring at us! We were the minority, the outcast whose one wrong move could possibly mean trouble. As in, BIG BIG TROUBLE!
