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27dec02
9:22 p.m.
*december
rituals*
naturally, december is my favorite month of the year.
it has a number of advantages. it gets a little colder at night, so i don't have to use the electric fan.
i only need to work for two weeks (at least in my present job). i get to
see my family and old high school friends. besides christmas, i celebrate
my birthday on the 28th. and of course, there's the new year, when we
think we can 'renew' ourselves again. though the
giddiness i once felt as a wide-eyed kid has diminished, every year i still find a
number of ways to enjoy the season.
2december
i
was walking home from work when i see that a stage has been set up in
front of quezon hall. this is the day that UP lights up for christmas, and
they have organized a little program to mark the ocasion. i decide to take
a seat and enjoy the show, encouraged by the memory of previous years
(fireworks and free food!). i notice that a number of families have
brought their kids. i text some friends, hoping for some company. the
program starts, and we hear the U.P. Concert Chorus sing, and see the U.P.
Dance Company and U.P. Filipiniana Dance Group show their grace. The
fireworks display is accompanied by U.P. Majam, a jazz band. The children
are delighted. And I was right -- they did serve free food, and the friend
I texted was just in time for the pancit, puto, empanada and tsokolate.
6december
i
start thinking of new year's resolutions. i have written in my journal my
idea of an "ideal day." this includes waking up earlier to
exercise and/or pray, and going to bed earlier to write and/or
pray.
8december
another
journal entry: "be professional," i.e. be on time, accomplish
tasks on time, do job well, face challenges, keep on learning, have
initiative for change.
9december
i
woke up at 6:30 am. i even cooked myself breakfast. very rare occurence. i
was still late, however.
10december
i
actually got to work a few minutes earlier without trying too hard. the
last non-red mark on my time card (when i was not late) was months ago.
very pleased. my resolution was taking effect earlier that i thought!
11december
i
wake up at 8:00. i do not want to be extremely late, because the last time
i did the boss called me into his office. so, i decide not to go to work.
i text an officemate i'm working half-day. (my rationale for these
absences: it is a mini-break, designed to rejuvenate -- i will be
more productive) it not the professional thing to do but it feels
more respectable than coming in at 9 or 10. at least nobody asks me what i
did in the morning. so much for the resolution. i should just ask for
flexi-time.
14december
peyups
christmas party. i was talked into joining the trip-to-jerusalem-find-the-hidden-talong-version.
last year, i made it to the finals of the lap version. unfortunately i
couldn't find the talong somebody hid in their kili-kili and was
eliminated. i brought wine for the kris kringle and received a parker pen
engraved "peyups addict." not the best description for someone
who's forgotten their password for logging in, but it
was a nice pen anyway.
16december
oblation
run day. i never did see them run up front. on freshman year, i remember
hesitating to make my way through a dense crowd -- the most i see is
someone with a bare butt being raised up. on this day, i am stuck in the
accounting office waiting for my salary voucher to be processed. after
waiting for an hour, i find out that they've run out of cash. when i get
back to the office, they thought i'd watched the run, because i'd been
gone for so long.
17december
cramming
work. i don't feel like i have to absolutely finish the final drawings for
bidding before the end of the week though. the projects, no matter how
urgent, still seem to have flexible deadlines. i'm not sure if that's good
or bad. perhaps i'm learning to be inefficient. i still have to face this again next year.
18december
lantern
parade! i have pictures on www.pbase.com/poni
and possibly an article on bnext.. the
highlight of the evening for me was the rousing performance of jingle
bells by the college of music's marching band followed by the announcement
of the college of architecture winning most dramatic, most creative and
best overall lantern. this is the first lantern parade i was able to watch
in quezon hall, since i always watched in melchor hall, where our college
is. earlier, i got to have dinner in the board room (for lack of any other
term to call it --- it is where the UP board of directors meet) because my
father attended a conference where the participants were invited to dinner
by the U.P. President. it was a perfect evening, dampened only by the
thought that i still had to go to work the next day.
20december
last
day in manila. the morning was spent in the bahay ng alumni, hoping for
our names to be called in the university raffle (they were giving away
flat screen tv's besides the usual ham and bag of groceries). i was
disappointed because i found out non-up contractuals like me weren't
entitled to a raffle stub. hmmph. wala na nga akong bonus. in the
afternoon we went back to the office to celebrate our own party. we
started two hours late because people had to go and get the monetization
for their leave. we did have fun, especially when we were poking fun
at our teenage pictures (our theme was that's entertainment --
everyone was required to bring a a baduy teenage days pic). we had our own
raffle, and i won a coffee maker. i'm not sure if i could use it, though,
because i don't drink a lot of coffee. i drink water to keep myself
awake.
21december
i
like being at the airport during this time of year, because there is more
than the usual number of people travelling. it's crowded, but i like
looking at the people dragging their pasalubongs, especially the
foreigners, and wondering where they are all spending their
vacations. on the road from cagayan to iligan we see that a number of
municipalities have put up christmas displays (belens, giant boats and
fish) along the road. when we get nearer to iligan there is noticeably
less. i remember the time when the barangays in iligan put up belens made
of indigenous materials, and we drove around to see them. sayang they
didn't keep up the contest. the best thing about the drive home from
cagayan to iligan though, was getting a view of the sea from certain
portions of the road. being in manila for most the year, i appreciate it
better every time i come home.
23december
i
am in bed most of the day, as well as the previous day, because of,
as my cousin called it, a 'coming-home-flu.' i have an excuse to sleep and
sleep and sleep without feeling too guilty about it.
24december
the
flu disappears, and we are off to my aunt's house to celebrate christmas
eve. a few relatives live nearby, and one of them is an uncle who is a sculptor. he has built a hut on stilts,
and filled it with bits and pieces of interesting odds and ends like
grind
stones, sculptures, dried twigs, shark jaws, wooden cart wheels and
more. he has an open air bathroom (my favorite spot of which is the
lavatory (lababo), which has a bougainvillea plant growing right over it.
he has landscaped the surroundings of the hut, and
put up lanterns on the trees making it quaint place to entertain people
during the night. you enter this area by a bridge over a fishpond, after
which you are greeted by a sculpture of three naked ladies (he calls it
the 'tres marias'). he recently bought a piano for his daughter, and it
adds a bit more character to his tribal-looking hut. another aunt
and uncle run a landscaping business, so besides my uncle's artistic hut,
there are flowers, fruit trees and bonsais all over the place. my aunt's
house, where we celebrated the party, has bamboo floors and bamboo lattice
walls. it is an ideal tropical house, with the breeze always blowing
through. she has recently built an airconditioned reinforced concrete
extension, complete with ceramic tiles, sliding glass windows and a
bathroom soon to be fitted with a heater -- we kid her that it is like a
hotel inside a nipa hut.
25december
my
uncle invites some family friends over to hang out in his hut. except for
my cousin, who is still learning, no one really plays the piano in pur
family. so we were glad when we had visitors who could play, and sing at
that. they sang christmas carols and old visayan songs, which i miss
hearing. it was a lot of fun, and my lola even sang 'ania si rosas pandan.'
26december
i
download a few simple piano pieces of christmas carols from the internet,
determined to learn a few at least. i went through piano lessons one
summer, and nothing really came out of it. i wanted to try and see if i
still remembered what i learned. my mother came along to practice too. we
spend hours thumping out 'we wish you a merry christmas' and a
number of other carols, with less-than-amazing results. if i was the
neighbor, i'd probably have thrown something at us by then.
27december
i was
starting to feel that i had very few friends left in the city, because i
hadn't seen any one of them since i arrived. fortunately, one high school
batchmate organized an outing to timoga, a swimming pool resort. this is
what people who live elsewhere don't miss doing when they come to iligan
-- go to timoga. even if you don't swim, at least get to eat the best
lechon in town. we saw other high school batchmates, who were there either
with friends or family. it got me feeling somewhat nostalgic, so
when i got home i opened my high school and elementary yearbooks. i
was part of the yearbook staff in high school, and i was really glad to be
able to choose a quote for the front page: "welcome o life! i go to
encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in
the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race" (james
joyce, portrait of the artist as a young man). it had a really awful
typo though, they spelled "forge" as "forget" which
confuses whatever inspiring message it was meant to give. as i was looking
through my elementary yearbook, i remembered my first crushes, and
wondered what they looked like now. i resolved to look more closely at
people's faces in iligan's streets -- it's so small the person you just
bumped into might have been your grade 6 seatmate.
28december
happy
birthday day! my mother ordered most of the food, to save us all the
trouble. i've stopped inviting most people because they don't need
inviting, they just come :) i see my party as a semi-reunion of sorts,
because it falls on the month when most people are home. ironically, our
high school's official reunion also falls on that day, but very few of our
batch actually go there. maybe some ten years from now..somehow we don't
feel old enough for a grand reunion yet. three major groups of people come
to my birthday: my relatives, my parent's friends, and my high school
batchmates. i can't invite my college friends, who are mostly in
manila. it's fun to have a big party, but you can't really talk to people
as much as you would want to. i felt like a fly, hovering over one
group for a little while then hopping over to the next. still, it was
nice to see faces of people you've come to grow up with, year after
year.
29december
my
aunts just introduced me to one of their favorite pastimes here --
ukay-ukay hunting. it's a cheap thrill: where else can you find a decent
looking blazer or a 100% silk polo for P3.33? it takes a good eye for the
right piece, and lots of patience and enthusiasm to wade through musty
smelling clothing. there are shoes, too, and hats, and bags and table
linens. the reward is having someone say, 'uy, ang ganda naman niyan!'
then telling them it cost less than P50. it's not about being so desperate
you can't buy a new shirt from the store, but the pleasure of finding a
bargain. ukay also has some advantages: sometimes you can find really good
brands with great quality and items you wouldn't find anywhere else, like
a japanese kimono, a trenchcoat fit for paris, or a young korean
astronaut's jacket. i'm going back to manila with my bags
significantly heavier.
previously...
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