Four years (and) running.

20 October 2009

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

At the very last minute before handing in my final draft, Father inserted this quote at the very beginning of my valedictory speech. It was a concoction of words, wound together by the invisible strings of childhood memories and experiences, all of which had to be carefully restructured by the cumbersome hands of my parents and teachers, alluding to the idea that perhaps I – even though I was the (allegedly) smartest kid in the cohort – was too young to understand what the hell Lao Tzu really meant. Well, I didn’t even know who the hell that guy was.

My childhood memories have slowly disintegrated away to the most unreachable corners of my mind, but somehow, I have managed to hold on to this particular fragment of the past, embedding it on my life like a hammered piece of nail on a white, empty wall of cement. The resulting crevasses, fissures on the wall, those little distortions circulating the nail, stagnant and permanent in the immaculate sea of white, hid beneath the overhanging framed picture of a twelve year-old boy with a sun-lit smile tightly sewn from ear to ear.

Four years have passed and I have already hung so many pictures on this wall. The collection has kept on growing and growing and growing. Whenever I felt that I had to keep a memory or two, I would take a nail and a piece of string and hang them, keeping them alive with the stillness and tangibleness of these photographs. Looking back at them once in a while, I can’t help but realize how much time has already gone by; how many things have changed; how much experience I’ve gained; how far I have journeyed on my own. I also can’t help but realize how much of my life has been kept beneath these photographs: the sadness, the sorrows, the pain, the secrets, the bad experiences of the past, all trapped within the crevasses of my existence, cunningly transcended by my extroverted attitude and almost unearthly happy disposition as flatly seen by a typical outsider.

Well, it’s overwhelming. It’s a continual bombardment of the past, the present, and the prospects of the near and distant futures. Leaving home at the age of fifteen, facing the trials and obstacles of the unforgiving world without the physical protection of the hands that I once deemed cumbersome, encountering the kinds of people that I’ve never imagined I would actually meet, opening my eyes to the reality that life is not as clear-cut as black and white, questioning the validity of truth and the meaning of physical and supernatural existence, having to shave every three or four days for a nice and clean face, I must say that I have already traveled a long, long, long way.

It doesn’t sound like I’m happy, but don’t get wrong. I am happy. I really am. Seriously, I’m not kidding. LOL. I’m extremely thankful for everything; for my family and friends; for the awesome education that I’ve received over the years; for that person that I was, that I’ve become, that I still am.

It’s already been four years running, and I am still having the time of my life.

The contract is going to end soon, but life doesn’t just end there. There’s still a lot more ahead. There’s still a lot more things to do. And there’s still a long, long, long way to go.

A journey of a thousand miles,

of a million kilometres,

of a billion light years,

of eternity,

begins with a single step

and a simple smile that says,

LG, life’s good. ;D

Happy 4th anniversary.

Light.

With the modern-day physicist’s current knowledge of the universe, nothing - at all – travels faster than the speed of light. Based on the empirical calculations of his forefathers, light travels at an amazing godlike speed of 300,000 kilometers per second. Usually travelling on a straight path, its propagation can be influenced by the gravitational force of a massive body floating in the universe, say, the Sun. In addition, depending on the opacity of the object in collision, a ray of light with a certain wavelength may not be able to pass through it. Nevertheless, regardless of its bendable nature and variable penetrative power, Light travels faster than anything else, and perhaps, to him, that is all that matters.

But it seems that certain circumstances prevent us from seeing things. Perhaps the very notions that it can only travel on a straight path and pass through a specific object, already give us a sufficient idea that a cashier can steal her employer’s money in the cash register while he is inside the toilet; that a man inside a car with tinted windows can drive along the highway stretch with his left steering the wheel and his right veering his pussy plunger like a gear shift lever; that a revered, retired army general in his 60s can spend a lovely afternoon reading People Magazine while ostentatiously singing and dancing to the beat of Madonna’s Vogue; that a stout, ugly and sickly mother of five badass children can find enough reasons to divorce (or even better, kill) his good-for-nothing husband by secretly finding out the existence of his online PerfectMatch account which he uses to impregnate his lifeless Saturday evenings. While light allows anyone to see and witness anything within the range of his stereoscopic vision, regardless of whether or not they bring about human pleasure or satisfaction, the limitations to its immense power actually lie in our inability to break the physical, impenetrable barriers caused by us ourselves. We cannot be in more than one place at the same time. We cannot see things beyond mountains. We cannot see what’s underneath the sea. While light is everywhere, we - in any moment in time – can only be somewhere, at some place, and not anywhere else.

Perhaps the invention of high-speed Internet has somewhat overcome these barriers. It has allowed man to access the world and circumnavigate its entirety as if he was the sole commander of his very own ship.  Without an inch of my ass moving out of the plastic chair inside my room, I can reach the beautiful beaches of the Bahamas or the pristine waterfalls of Tanzania in a few seconds or so, depending on the strength of my wi-fi connection. I can even travel to outer space. While we cannot see what the light in another part of the world may allow us to see there, the images of foreign lands and peoples can simply be just a click away. We can also hear things as if we are really there: the sound of traffic, cackling laughters, cries for help, among many others.  Never had we held so much power right under our very fingertips.

And this has become so evident in the past few days. Like a travelling wave of light, with so much energy along its incessant and relentless propagations, news about the then-city, now-wasteland that is Metro Manila, hijacked cyberspace immediately after Ondoy’s wrath came and left like a loan shark demanding the monthly interest payment from his unfortunate victim. Pictures swarmed the electronic world and their copies multiplied like bacteria, sending concerned spines shivering all over the world. News of the worst metropolitan calamity in the Philippines in four decades, regardless of their reliability and accountability, spread like wildfire and filled up the headlines of every imaginable newspaper. And as the commander-circumnavigator of my own ship, I somehow reconnected with my identity and found ourselves steering and veering towards my desolate and grief-stricken country. Although in reality, I was stuck in another piece of land, which is a hell for any IB student, but which would undoubtedly be Nirvana for anyone who lost their homes to Ondoy. And, more sadly, all I could do was to watch the calamitous events like flashes of lightning, discomfortingly filling my heart with amazement, anxiety, and fear.

Such power I had, under my fingertips, to be able to see my countrymen covered in mud, traversing the torrential currents of rain and sewage. Such power to be able to witness homes being destroyed and washed away like children’s toys. Such power, to be able to witness the new generation Bayanihan, utilizing all forms of media to reach out for manpower and financial assistance. Newspapers. Radio. TV. Google. Facebook. Twitter. Such power indeed. Much more powerful than light, whose absence on that unfortunate Saturday left twelve million in complete darkness.

Ondoy’s wrath drowned the hearts of many with its relentless, continuous downpour of a month’s worth of rainfall in six hours, and left a multitude of hungry, naked, and homeless civilians. And while Manila was submerged in darkness, the Internet proved its increasing dominance in our lives. It became the fastest means of communication with the rest of the world. It’s accessibility, ease of use, simplicity, and unparalleled speed allowed us to know about the disaster within just a few clicks. Regardless of where the rest of the Filipinos were at that moment, they all gathered together as one force in cyberspace. Once information spread like virus, the consequential actions then came down to each computer user. Many Filipinos harnessed its power to further spread the news to help speed up financial assistance and increase volunteer numbers to make up for the government’s unsurpring failure to come up with preventive disaster measures, or at least coordinate its forces and allocate its resources (because there were no resources to allocate anyway, since the country’s Emergency Funds were diverted to sponsor the diablo’s international ventures such as this).

Well, everything all came down to me. I had the chance to use its power to - at the very least - help spread the news, in the hopes of getting more outside help. But instead, I simply sat down on my plastic chair, drowning myself in the comforts of my room while watching a submerging metropolitan of twelve million people desperately trying to make ends meet.

Three

Photo courtesy of Time Magazine

By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer

One, after Fernando Poe, Jr. died on Dec. 14, 2004, they did an inventory of his things. In one bodega, they found cartons of relief goods that were meant to be delivered to Infanta, Quezon. Infanta had been buried in mudslides a couple of weeks before his death and, along with many others, FPJ had bestirred himself to help.

With one difference: While all the other relief-givers were busy putting their names on their donations—or as in the case of many public officials, putting their names on other people’s donations—FPJ was not. His people would swear later he would not hear of it. He gave strict orders for the relief goods to be unmarked and just sent where needed. It altered my view of the man completely and made me vow to make amends to his family for some of the things I had said about him.

That is class. Which makes me furious today about the politicians who want to exploit the misfortune of others for their ends. Or indeed their continuing travail, many of them having lost everything in one of the worst disasters ever to hit this metropolis. It’s a sentiment I know is shared by many, even those who were not directly ravaged by the floods, as I’ve seen in news reports and blogs.

Heading the pack is Willie Revillame who was busy announcing that “kami nga ni Senator Villar” have been tireless in delivering relief goods to the needy. You’d think the guy would have learned a thing or two from being crucified after he vituperated about Cory’s coffin being shown on his show, consequently disrupting his and his audience’s fun. Clearly his chastisement hasn’t chastened him enough. Or he’s just fundamentally tasteless he cannot see that the last thing the victims want is to be treated like contestants, or supplicants, of “Wowowee” waiting upon his generosity.

Thankfully the tack is likely to backfire. People are in a foul mood and are not likely to remember Revillame—or his principal—with fondness come election time.

The last thing we need is to see politics mix with relief. “When you want to shoot, shoot,” as Eli Wallach said in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” finishing off the guy who was threatening him with all sorts of mayhem. Same principle here: When you want to give, give, don’t advertise. All you’ll get back is mayhem in the minds of the beneficiaries.

Two, on Tuesday government’s disaster council gave a briefing. They were three days late. The time to have done that was Saturday at the height of the rains. The time to have appeared in public to calm down a metropolis in the grip of panic was last Saturday. The time to have gone to the aid of people who had every reason to panic (some of them were huddling on the roofs of their houses, along with their children and their aged, pounded by unceasing rain) was last Saturday. The time to have unleashed the full resources of government, which should have been there because government has—or should have—billions of pesos in calamity and emergency funds, was last Saturday.

In fact the monumental thing that happened last Saturday was the complete absence of government. The only government there was were the media, notably ABS-CBN and GMA-7. You can forgive both for advertising their wares, or relief efforts, under the extenuating circumstances. They were the government. They were the central authority apprising the public of the situation. They were the central authority coming to the aid of the victims. They were the central authority running the country.

The Internet is full of reports that the emergency fund is depleted, having gone to fund Arroyo and company’s not-very-emergency trips abroad. I’ll leave that for when it’s confirmed. But the breakdown of government is staggering. Arroyo should thank God, or whatever entity she worships, we have elections—the same elections she tried to monkey with earlier with Charter change. Without that she would probably not last this week, given an incensed citizenry, given an aroused citizenry, given a citizenry that will no longer brook abuse. This is as angry as I’ve seen residents of Metro Manila in a long time.

Three, indeed to this hour, what government we have is courtesy of the private sector where voluntarism has sprung like wildflowers. That is the bright spot in all this, the light amid the darkness, the blazing sun after the storm. Truly the Filipino rises to his finest self during trying times, the more trying the times, the finer the rising. Or it is in times of disaster that the Filipino ceases to be a disaster, thinking of others first before self.

It’s especially heartening to see the kids go en masse on relief mode. Many of the kids in my neighborhood have done so, teeners who normally while away the holidays playing basketball, flipping rollerblades, and drinking beer in the stores. They’ve enrolled themselves to help without thought of pay, without thought of recompense, without thought of reward. Just the thought of doing something nice for a change, just the thought of doing something to make things better.

It rekindles memories of the July-August floods of 1972, when students also went in droves to places in Greater Manila no longer traversable by land, or indeed outside the metropolis where they were greeted by a greater ravaging. But then there was activism to fuel, or goad, or flagellate the youth to idealism. Well, there was also the prospect of meeting a cool chick or a cool cat while on your best form. Today, there’s just spontaneous goodwill to do the trick. And the prospect of meeting a cool chick or a cool cat while on your best form. The kids come home happy, comparing the welts and bruises on their arms from lifting crates while drinking beer in the stores.

Makes you wonder what on earth you need government for.

For everything else, there’s mastercard.

Gawad Kalinga was AWESOME.

Oh did I write it with a full stop? Wait, that’s wrong.

Gawad Kalinga was AWESOME!!!

Alright!

If there is one prominent change that occurred during this 6-day trip, it would be reflected on my skin complexion. HAHAHAHAHAHA you might want to observe, as you skim through the photos, how my skin transformed from light brown, to golden brown, and finally to nalaka skin. Good thing it’s going back to normal now. XD

**

First day!

Arrival, Lunch at Chicken House, Negros Showroom, tour around Bacolod, met the awesome kids at GK ERH Village!

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Second day!

First day of manual labour; made our own cement mixture, divided ourselves and plastered the hollow block walls with cement in two different houses. FUN!!

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Third Day!

I guess we did a really horrible job at plastering the walls with cement, so they made us dig the ground and collect soil to level part of the land some 100 meters away. damn. Tiring, but AWESOME FUN! Plus, dinner at some awesome restaurant courtesy of Ricky’s relatives who came all the way from Iloilo. I LOVE FILIPINO FOOD.

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Fourth Day!

More digging, and PAINTING! Painted two houses, one with blue, and the other one with yellow. More digging and carrying soil. haha. FUN!

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Fifth Day!

Tour around Bacolod! Went to a farm, to an ancestral house that was transformed into a museum, etc etc. Singapore Night in the evening! BALUT EATING CHALLENGE!! MWAHAHAHAHA.. Jamming sessions till 3am in the morning!  AMAAAAYYYZENG

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Sixth Day!

BYE BYE BACOLOD, PHILIPPINES! ):

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AWESOME EXPERIENCE MAN.

All of us really had an amazing time, and are looking forward to come back. To those who did not go for some reason, and are still interested, there’s always next year (:

Now I can say that

I am a GK Advocate!

Three years. and counting.

I have long surrendered myself to the fact that my memory sucks big time; that the only things I can remember in life are those things that I find absolutely necessary for school examinations; and that memories that are worth to be cherished could simply just disappear like a piss on the roadside – it evaporates like water into the atmosphere, but leaves a mark and a smell just strong enough for me to trace out its mere presence.

It didn’t even occur to me that today actually marks my third year of existence in Singapore until my friend sent me a message. As far as I could remember, I was crusing 30000 feet above the earth inside Singapore Airlines with four other Filipino students I have never met before, and then after three hours I found myself stepping into a new country. The day before that, I could remember my mother wailing and crying outside the airport as if she was going to lose me forever. It was also the first time EVER that I saw my dad shed some tears. My brothers were still young at that time, so probably they did not really have a bit of inkling how that separation meant for mum, dad, and I.

It was hard to adapt. I was so young, and I was already living on my own. I gained freedom and power over myself, but I lost the comfort of home and the company of my loved ones. It was a lopsided trade-off that I had to bear. I had to wash and iron my own clothes. I had to wake up to the tintinnabulating cries of my alarm clock. I had to eat boarding school food. I had to do my own grocery. I had to travel on my own. It felt as if the whole world turned upside down.

My secondary three and four years were a cornucopia of horrible, wonderful, and memorable events. It was such a perfect blend of emotions and experiences and a homogenized mixture of happiness and sadness that I can’t really say if there were moments were I felt only one of the two at a specific day. I went to an exciting school filled with students filled with so much enthusiasm, team spirit, joy and happines. Yet I never actually remembered myself in that institution feeling the same way as my classmates and schoolmates. The school has this culture that has the power to make those who want to be cherished feel truly cherished, but I was wondering why I did not feel that way at all. It was a good two years, just that it wasn’t exactly as memorable as I hoped it would be. But like what I said, those two years were a perfect blend of emotions and experiences. I stayed at a ramshackle boarding school that in itself, is a useless, lifeless concrete structure standing atop of a small hill, a building that exudes an aura of despondency and disconsolation to anyone who observes its lonely majesty over the horizon. Nevertheless, it was a place that was filled with the most exciting and interesting people I have met in my life. From a distance, it was an amazing sight to see these people gathered together, interacting with each other, eating together at the dining table, sharing unified and opposite views. From a distance, in the eyes of a local student, most of them were simply geeks and nerds, people who didn’t have a life aside from studying from dusk till dawn. As a living testimony, living with them has proven this conception to be a misconception. Each of them was such an interesting human being in his or her own way that made the boarding school such a colourful place to live in. Some of them were indeed geeks and nerds, but they weren’t just simply geeks and nerds. They were unique and interesting. I don’t know. I just felt very exuberant and jolly and satisfied at the company of my hostel mates. And that has made my two years worth remembering.

And now, I’m on my third year, and life in Singapore has gotten better. I guess my mum was always right. It takes time for anything to settle down. Well, I knew it would take time to settle down, but I never expected that it would take me only until now to keep myself calm amidst the unrelenting storms in life. Life in my new school is so much better. I have finally felt a sense of belongingness and pride within my new school. There are so much more privileges in my new scholarship that sometimes taking a time off from my studies to do less sensible stuff makes me feel awkward and guilty. School has been so much stressful and fun at the same time. Boarding school life has lost a little bit of euphoria since i’m now living in a condominium and I have less companions in the house. Well, I believe everything has to be balanced out. And God does it really fairly.

I’ve been wondering if these three years were worth it. It always comes into my mind the fact that if I didn’t leave the Philippines at all, I would have been in my second year in university by now, and in no time would be graduating and getting a decent job and earning a decent pay to repay my mum and dad who have almost immolated themselves just to raise up my brothers and I.

I hope these years have beeen worth the time and money sacrificed. Because I’m not like many young people in this country who are so much blessed in life that they need not to worry much about what lies ahead in the future. Though I am one of those I would considered privileged to savour much more of any successes they achieve in life, because for them, reaping the fruits of success would mean the whole world for the people whom they love.

Happy three years, Rowland.

********

I can’t possibly post every single picture I have, but, oh well, here goes some of them.

 

Oh yeah, and this may be of interest to you:

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.  Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.  One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.  ~Mary Jean Iron

I wanna have five children. I’m thinking twice.

I really need to study chemistry now, for there is a test (a test?!!?) tomorrow, but I saw this article in the internet saying that some head of EU delegation dude is endorsing a bill passed by some Filipino legislators to promote a “serious” family planning programme in the Philippines.

UNsurprisingly, the omnipresent Catholic Church comes into the picture, voicing out their staunch opposition, threatening  to excommunicate them, those poor brave souls (the legislators) who will vote for the bill to be passed.

I am a Catholic. I believe in the sanctity of life. I suport the Catholic Church’s stand against contraceptives, although if you were to really ask me, I don’t really mind using it (in the future). Therefore, call me a hypocrite. But in this recalcitrant world, wherein – I believe – a part of my existence as a frail human being persists, I just can’t stand the government’s impotence problems. Dude, if you really want to do it, have the balls to do it. Don’t be a pussy wussy whatever. Don’t let some old priests scare you. Or is it just that yoooooooooooouuuuu are afraid of losing their support for the coming 2010 elections if you decide to sign THE bill?

I think Filipinos are born naturally intelligent. And talented. And creative. Raising your eyebrows won’t help. I have lived away from the Philippines long enough to notice the difference between examinations-based  and  naturally well-rounded  organisms. When it comes to family planning, I shall give an A grade for following the Bible’s “go and multiply” instruction manual, but an F grade for making the lives of many new children worse off year by year.  And I must make this clear: I’m not saying the Church’s at fault for my country’s skyrocketing poverty levels. That archipelago of 7,107 islands will be occupied by a whopping 100 million starving people in the next five years. Of course the population will always increase. Reproduction was essentially created to preserve the human race. But as what is always said, anything in excess is never good.

I don’t support killing babies. In fact, did you really kill a baby when you haven’t yet created the baby at the first place? You would not even get to that shining moment of some amazing mitosis and meiosis if you wore a rubber on you. The “fusion” of love in the heat of the night would have never occurred. On second thought, killing babies would apply more to abortion rather than to the use of contraceptives.

Maybe they should just remove the flavoring. It adds to the disgruntlement of conservative people. It’s like… Eeew…? And why does that thing have a banana flovor in it?! Banana flavor! And, look, there’s mint too! Let us ban this unprincipled, despicable, immoral device!

And I think it is even worse if you contribute to the suffering of people by letting your wife mimic a China factory. She produces too much, resulting in too many people to feed, to take care of, to send to school, to scold, and to release, let go, and have a life of their own, to start their own family football teams. Too many eventually suffer. That’s just my point of view.

But if you look at the real trend of events in the Philippines, the population growth has gone down by a few decimals, that’s good news, but the standard of living continues to plummet like a meteor crashing down on earth.

So what is really the problem? I don’t know.

Newspaper.

It’s time to officially start my countdown. I’m going back to Singapore on Friday!

Anyway, I went with my parents for some meeting with their new business partner (my mother’s best friend) and of course, it was a terrible ordeal for me as I had to sit down with them and do practically nothing but to listen to them talk about business prospects, money, numbers, and forecast of their future profits. Well I hope those forecasts turn out to be real money soon. It was a breather when I discovered that there was a newspaper beside me. As usual, I started my newspaper ritual by throwing away the classified ads section first, then reading the business section followed by the editorial section (the most boring sections first), and then the lifestyle section. The main article was about Mike Myers’ new movie, the Love Guru. Now, after his mojo finally waned in his Austin Powers franchise, he decides to grow SOME facial hair and dress up like an Indian to be a, guess what, a LOVE guru. He looks kinda cool actually. But then as I started reading the article I wondered if all lifestyle writers are just simply fascinated with penises as if they have never seen one before O.O, if all of them are just penis-envy O.o, or if all of them are just interested with Justin Timberlake on his speedos *.*. WTH, half of the chunk of the article on the first page was all about it! If they talked about the Love Guru’s it would have been an interesting read then. Ha ha.

Anyway, I continued reading the rest of the newspaper and I found this ridiculous poster in the first few sections of the paper.

Pinoy Idol?! $^(#$@%??!

As far as I am concerned, we already had the Philippine Idol before, with Mau Marcelo as the winner. It was a good show; the only letdown was that it was shown in ABC5. Really really annoying. And now here’s another version of the same show, and they’ve given it a different title. It sounds bad actually. Pinoy Idol.

Haha imagine if you’re talking to a Singaporean friend.

“Do you know the Pinoy Idol?”

“What? I don’t think so.”

“Pinoy Idol! U know, PINOY idol?”

“Pinoy Idol WHAAT?! I dun understand you”

“You have a Singapore Idol version here righttt. So in the Philippines, we oso got.. Pinoy Idol!”

“Philippines Idol?“.

“No lah. Pinoy Idol. PEE-NOY.”

“Pinoy? What’s Pinoy? Must explain properly!”

“Ah, it’s a slang for the word Filipino. It’s what Filipinos usually call themselves.”

“Ah! Aiyoh! it’s in Tagalog righttt??” (pronounces it as ta-galog)

“Yes. It’s the Filipino version of American Idol.”

“Oh! Philipino Idol!!”

“Y-yea–yeah.”

Why did those Spanish colonizers have to name my country after their king who died of syphilis.

____________________________________________________

another quiz!

List 6 things you would like to say to 6 different people without mentioning their names.

1. beer.

2. hallucination.

3. bankruptcy.

4. december.

5. visitation.

6. craziness.

Plight.

The Ted Failon inside the television set was announcing something about tap water now being used as fuel for car engines. As the Ted Failon disappeared in a split-second, and was replaced by a beautiful girl scantily dressed in a bikini endorsing a bottle of mineral water, I heard my dad say ‘Yan, mas maganda ‘yan, tubig nalang ang ipa-pang-gasolina natin sa kotse; tingnan natin ‘yang OPEC na ‘yan. Maghihirap din sila.

And I thought, Yeah. True, true. I wonder when will power and authority be ever put to good use. Be ever used to help the hungry, the sick, and the suffering. Malacañang’s image casts a dark diabolical shadow over my imaginings of shanty homes and homeless Filipino children. OPEC and UN logos bounce off from island to island, sinking each one of them into the depths of the sea. Sure, my imaginations can sometimes go too surreal. But the penurious fragment of my whole existence suddenly voices out its sentiment: STOP IT.

This afternoon, two children were outside the gate of the house, black and unsightly because of the dirt that has smudged their bodies. It seemed that they haven’t taken a bath for days. They were holding onto the rails of the gate: their eyes filled with hunger and forlorn, the surrounding outside the house seeming like a juvenile prison cell. They asked me if they could have any empty tin cans which they could sell. I said “NO”, because I didn’t know if there were any. I was the only one inside the house at that time. “Dong, balik lang mo unya ha, Wala man gud si nanay nako, wa ko kabalo kung naa mi,” (Just return later, my mother’s not here, I don’t know if we have any) I hesitantly replied.

And they left. But as I went back inside, one of the little boys came back, asking, “Kuya, naa mo bugas?” (Kuya, do you have rice?) And I looked at him, shook my head, closed the door, uncertain if what I just did was right.

I haven’t really thought of it; the millions of my kababayans in constant plight, scavenging the mountain pile of landfills in search for a few cents’ worth of garbage; selling their bodies across the dark Manila streets out of poverty; selling their eyes, their kidneys; crossing the violent seas in huge cargo ships; leaving their families and their honorable college diplomas behind to work as domestic helpers in Singapore, Hong Kong, and in other parts of the world.

It is painful to know that such sacrifices have to be made by them, because there are people who refuse and refute the act of sacrifice.