Love Is Here Where I Live

I borrowed that title from a song by Everything But The Girl.

I've always, time and time again, been asked why I have not gone abroad.

There is so much more out there, so much for me to gain.

The simple and honest answer is always the easiest answer to say.

My mom and the children are here. No amount of money, fame, or fortune will make up for the present time. The present determines our future.

My absence in it simply makes my future not the best one I could ever have made for myself and my family.

The reason I think of this now is because at some point in time in the past year or so, I have asked the girls (Nerissa and Jane), if they miss their mother.

It seems that they have remarkably fared better than me when it comes to our recovery.

I have openly admitted that my father's death when I was 12 took me 9 years to get over.

Now 2009 is about to end.

And here I am still in recovery over her death.

The memories still sting, but the difference between now and the past years is that I have realized that the worst is ever.

Everything from hereon in is a better day.

I'm not really here because my mother and the girls need me.

I am here because I need to be with them.

Love is here where I live.

Holy Week Beckons 2009

I am quite excited.

Last Sunday I started a new blog about movies I watched, mainly because I despised my inability to recall what I watched on weekends.

And recently I dropped a hint on the ASTER2010 blog, because July is almost here and that is the time I actively and wildly continue the story. In short, to my readers, just wait.

I will be continuing Aster this July 2009, until we reach that apocalyptic 2010.

Now don't be scared nor worried. It will end well, but not as people think.

Hang on and read on for Aster 2010!

(Edit: I deleted the April 2009 posting in aster2010. It needs more work and it really should come out in July.)

so what

everybody i am not getting younger and i am quite happy at this point of my physicality

meaning, i am 36

so enjoy the pics. i have updated them at friendster and multiply and those stuff during this time

Ok I see an add image, so here it is

Requiem for Natividad Rosal

How old was I then?

Fourth year high, 18 years old or something.

Anyway, the trigger. I got to work on Friday morning. Thru the miracle of Yahoo Groups, someone had sent Victor Ramos, a classmate from highschool, a message that our physics and homeroom teacher bit the dust and so and so.

I wasn't so sure how I felt, but I went into a meeting with so and so and there and that project, and found myself sad.

Towards the end of the day, I had told Melissa I was sad. I explained to her who she was.

Natividad Rosal, to me, was a noxious bitch back then. I was fourth year high, drunk from my fame of non-internet, post-Jingle, pre-college smarts.

Or at least that was what I thought of her. She was a terror teacher who traumatized me. She was the one who wanted me to fail miserably and die.

I distinctly remember my friends laughing that she was one of the guys's teacher, that guy was Raymond Tan, and the guys had a sick crush on his mom, who by now is really old.... you know the rest.

Anyway, the reason I am writing this is that towards my adult years I had realized why Natividad Rosal did what she did, why she terrorized me, and all that.

It was because she cared.

In the ending years of my high school life, marred greatly by my father's death and my stupid genius, I was informed that she was the one who championed that I should graduate and move on.

In fact, I distinctly remember her seeing me at some point there after that faithful summer that decided the rest of my life.

She had convinved the Ateneo board to let me move on.

She told me that in the next part of my life, be on time.

I know she will understand, I'm late and all that.

Ms Natividad Rosal, my fourth year high school physics teacher, you have taught me a great deal about life.

I write this for you, because rare is a soul like yours.

Thank you, mam. You changed my life.

Folfox

We are going Folfox.

Oxaliplatin.
Fluorouracil.
Folinic Acid.

Go google.
I'm done.

I don't have anything to say right now.
It's a Sunday evening.

If I work, Mom is immortal

On November 30th last year, Mom had me come meet her at the hospital. She was quite ill, had excruciating abdominal pain. She asked Arsenia to go with her to the hospital, and I met them there.

The following day was my interview for a new job. The company is called stag, take note of the small S as that is how it is preferred. I was applying for a developer position, in the end they offered me one for resource management. They saw my job history and it spoke. On December 18th, we signed contracts and I started.

That was also the day Mom checked out of the hospital.

Mom had colon cancer. The doctors took 8 hours removing part of her lower colon that had a large tumor. Right now she has a colostomy. That means her intestines have been diverted to an opening on the side of her abdomen and empties into a pouch. The pouch happens to be an expensive contrivance, which I did not find surprising given the nature of men.

We started the year on a good note. Lucy is having a baby, due this July. At a particularly depressed morning, I found her sending me a photo of her on her 16th week, and it lifted my spirits.


By this time we were grappling with the financial horns of Mom's cancer. The doctor, stupid enough as it seems to have notified us late, was asking us to act on the urgent matter of Mom's chemo and radiotherapy. Lucy was naturally incensed.

Not to put Mom's needs aside, of course. Mom thinks it's better to skip all of it. She would rather have the money spent elsewhere, cheaper natural cures.

I don't really have an answer right now. I'm not about to make a choice if it's the scientists we go or the herbalists.

My dream is simple.

Mom and the girls go to the States and live happily ever after.

Shock.

Is that me hearing myself that the US of A is going to cure all ills we have here?

Or maybe a desperate decision that anything is better than here.

Bah.

I am (an) ITRM. The Stolks pay me a sum to manage resources, and those aren't simple trades.

Shouldn't we all dream that if we worked hard enough, our mother will live forever?

What I needed

Over a year had passed.

Did I need that much time to pass? Is a year enough?

The country is at a boom. Foreign companies are opening offshore offices. Cheap was where all's at.

In the midst of career and my so-called life, Nerissa and Jane's mom died. She died on a Friday morning, October 14, 2005. I remember. Lucy was in town, and she came to the hospital to ask me come home, to rest.

Shortly after we left, she died.