Bomb threat hits Mandaluyong call center

Radio dzBB’s Roland Bola reported that police sent explosives and ordnance experts to the site to check for explosives, but the teams found nothing.

The bomb threat hit the call center at the 22nd floor of a building in Mandaluyong City

Nuff said.

I went to Superferry’s pier 15 to fetch our new househelp Maimai. While I’m writing this, I’ve began to wonder why they HAVE to repeat the first 2 syllables of their names twice. We’ve had a Mimi once, then there was Tata, there’s also Daday, Nene.Toto. Nining. I find it hilarious. If I were a househelp, my name would be Ai-ai, not a very pleasant name at all. I would insist on being called Ingrid, or Deidre, perhaps Yvonne will do just fine too. This is in case I’m done with my call center stint and decide to submit myself to a life of domesticity and dirty dishes.

Two families caught my attention while I was standing under the heat of the sun. It seemed that the mommies were leaving with their kids, leaving the dads behind. It was heart-wrenching. It looked like something out of an afternoon drama series. It’s been a while since I’ve seen men cry like that, oblivious to everything except for the fact that they will not be seeing their wives and kids for probably a long while. I began to ask myself, "Why do people have to leave anyway?". Nothing out there is worth the pain of knowing that you will not be able to be with people you love for years at a time.

Neither of the families knew each other, but the scene is the same. One of the dads gave his hanky to one of his sons telling him to keep it so he’ll have something to remember his father by. And almost right on cue, Sarah McLachlan’s ‘ i will remember you" started to play on my mp3 player. 

While I was waiting and watching them bid a tearful goodbye to each other, only one question lingered in my mind. " Where the f*!%# is Maimai ?!?’

One of the perks of my job is that I get to see the sun rise each and every morning. I almost always get to pick a cozy little spot facing east. No matter how crazy life in the office gets, I stop at my tracks at 5:30 and just stand in awe of what’s happening outside.  No two mornings are the same. There are days that you see blue skies right away, sometimes orange. Most of the time, it’s both and a whole lot of other colors. It makes me realize how small I am in this universe that we call life and that the world doesn’t revolve around me.

i love this song.

There’s something about the dark that scare the hell out of me. My parents did a poor job making sure that I don’t watch scary movies when I was a kid. I still remember the first horror movie that I saw. I was around 3 or 4 years old at the time, it was Evil Dead, the first one. Yeah, I watched a rerun a few years ago and found out how lousy it was but it’s different when you’re a preschooler. It can get pretty intense. I remember having nightmares every night about trees growing monster branches ready to grab my feet and drag me into the unknown, turn me into a zombie after it has sucked the life out of me.

And it doesn’t help to have family members who have had close encounters with the third kind. Hence, my sister Nikki’s Southland Witch Project. (she’s going to kill me for this, but what the heck!).

When I was 5 my sister Nikki coming home late in the afternoon, crying and shaking with fright. She left with my brother and a cousin that morning to go jogging in Southland, an area quite near where we live. It was supposed to be some sort of subdivision that was still under construction; very few people go there, just mostly workers. My brother said he and my cousin were making fun of Nikki and was jogging way ahead of her. He told her that if she doesn’t keep up, they’re going to leave her alone. They were merrily being their bully selves but when they looked behind them, Nikki was nowhere to be seen.  At this point, they know that if they come home without Nikki, they’d be dead meat. So they looked for her around the area, Southland was mainly just land and a strip of concrete walkway in the middle that stretches out more or less a couple of kilometers. They went home at around 10 AM, after which Mom gave them a beating they will not soon forget. Off went Mom and the rest of the family to go look for my missing sister.

Then comes Nikki wearing a light blue sweater (I remember it vividly, as if it happened yesterday), with tears streaming down her face. She told us that she got kidnapped by a witch, whose feet don’t touch the ground. The long and short of it is, this story was passed on in every reunion, gathering, etc. Even friends from the US has passed on the same story to I don’t know who else. Until Nikki came clean several years ago and admitted that she made the whole thing up. The truth was, she went to a friend’s house and wasn’t able to keep track of the time. So she cooked up this really out of this world tale to get away with it. Ang galing di ba? Talk about putting your imagination into good use.

Yes, I do watch the evening news. And yes, I do know that the world doesn’t revolve around me, lars, lance, our dogs and the office.

An anti-poverty organization conducted a survey and found out that there are more hungry people this year than around the same time last year. It’s sad, but it’s a reality, survey or no survey. What’s makes it worse is that there are actually people who are stupid enough to have an interview on national TV saying that those below the poverty line is happy and content just as long as they get to have 1 meal a day because that’s how their "culture" works. What kind of logic is that?!?  Does he really think that if those people had a choice, they’d be in the same kind of sh*t they’re in now? And then goes on to say that there are programs set to solve this kind of issue. I’d really love to know how this guy got his job in the first place.

I respect other people’s opinions, I really do. If that’s how they look at things, it’s fine with me, opinions are never wrong. But the fact that this guy was given an office, a position and authority to act on something so crucial, he should be man enough to set aside his own opinions, and take the truth as it is.

And the truth of the matter is, that gnawing pain in my stomach whenever I skip breakfast is the same pain any other hungry person feels.  Hunger knows no culture and it’s definitely not something one can get used to. If that guy from the evening news could get himself to understand that, then it should be a good start.

Puppy, the half japanese spitz-half mongrel my sister gave me 2 years ago, is going to say goodbye to his balls this Saturday. I feel nervous for him for some reason. I remember the time that our other dog, Gollum, had to go through the same thing also. He kept licking the stitches too much, they snapped leaving the cut wide open. As expected, I tried hard not to pass out when it happened. We had to bring him to the vet again so he can "re-stitch" him. It’s going to be for his best interest. After they take out his balls, he’ll be able to wander around the house for as long as he wants. Manang Jigs is almost always in heat so if we don’t do anything about it, she’s going to get pregnant for the third time this year.

Lance is going to school this June, nursery level. But there’s nothing so "nursery" about the tuition fee. We’d have to shell out Php 20,000++ for this year, we’ve asked around already but and I found out that that’s the most reasonable price there is. The owner was kind enough to give us a tour of the school, Lance loved the place.

I miss mom. She’s in Cebu and won’t be back until the end of May. She sounded like she was having a hell of a good time when she texted me the other day. The last time she was in Cebu was around she was pregnant with my brother and he’s now 32 years old. She goes with her cousins everyday to either go fishing or just hang out in the beach. I should be doing the same thing if you ask me.

Lance has managed to break his collarbone three weeks ago. I was there when he did a backflip, an unsuccessful backflip  at that. Even before the x-ray results came in, I knew that something went really wrong. It was like watching a scene from a horror movie in slow motion. I try not to think about it because it’s over and done with, but whenever I do think about it, I try hard not to pass out.

I did almost pass out, about 6 -7 times that night. Right before the fall, after the fall, when Lance cried uncontrollably because his shoulder hurt, on the way to the hospital, when I saw the x-ray results, when the nurse poked lance’s hand with a needle (for the dextrose) and in the morning due to lack of sleep. I’m glad Lance is ok now. I love Maxicare.

We just got back from Bacolod. Lars grandad died due to reasons I wasn’t really able to fully understand. Although according to Lars’s mom, he began feeling weak a few months back. He was 84 years old.

The cemetery his grandad was buried in was I think was the older ones in Bacolod. I decided to take a walk after the burial and noticed that most of the folks buried there reached more or less 90 years old, youngest that I saw was around 70 years old.

If given the choice, I would want to die in my own room, on my own bed, with fresh flowers on my bedside table. I want to be buried right away.There’s no use delaying the inevitable. I imagine everybody wearing light blue, because I like that color, although I never did look good in blue. My tombstone would say " GONE HOME. BE BACK LATER =)"

It’s funny how Lance’s earwax seem to take a life of it’s own. On some days, he’s almost out of the earhole and on some days it manages to get itself stuck way down at the bottom. We’ve been trying to get it out for the past few months but the earwax has always been one step ahead of us. It probably has ESP and it can "feel" if we’re going to check up on it anytime soon. Lance doesn’t seem to mind though, he’s enjoying it even.

Tomorrow is Christmas eve. We were planning on ordering out but for some reason, I decided to do the cooking myself. My shift is from 5 AM to 2 PM, but it doesn’t end there, I have Wednesday and Thursday off. That means I have work on Christmas day. Now how can a person get so unlucky? I don’t know.

My new blog drive would now be www.therapy4rain.blogspot.com since Friendster doesn’t offer archives