The world’s most spectacular boy is 2 years old today. Let me take a minute to reflect on how I was 2 years ago.

Part I:

• Stirups hurt my legs but I didn’t mind because the pain inside my body was stronger.
• Nurses are gossiping about the woman in the other delivery room. She and her husband were being pressured to make love right there and then because they refused to take medicines to induce contractions, and sex was the only [natural] way. I would have loved to laugh with them if I didn’t feel so terrible.
• I kept calling the syringes they were using to administer dormicum to me as “icepick”.
• I was so disoriented that I probably wrote a 100-post blog in my head during my 18-hour labor.
• I was praying Our Father in my head but was shouting “Jesus please bless and agi-up me!!!”
• I thought my intern attendant had the cutest scrub suit… frogs! Made me feel like I was in a slumber party.
• People were passing my cubicle saying “hi” and I said “hi” back… completely forgetting that the first thing they see when they look in my direction was my private part that was being shaved by the nurse.

Part II:

• I remember the helpless panic i felt when they told me my labor has gone on too long already, my blood pressure was unstable and my baby could die if they don’t get him out ASAP.
• I remember my doctor describing the Caesarian Operation to me and I was nodding as if I understood. I didn’t.
• I remember the cold sweat on my body and how I trembled on the stretcher as I was being wheeled to the operating room.
• I remember waking up in the recovery room with only my attending intern, initially feeling very empty because for the first time in months, my tummy was flat.

Part III:

• I was with my newborn baby for the first time. I held him in my arms and thought, “thank God he looks like me!”
• I smiled at my mom who came all the way from La Union and saw her in a different light. The first thing she said was, “now you know how that felt, will you be kinder to me?” I laughed and said, “My child’s a boy, I’m not getting nasty-daughter karma anytime soon.”
• I remember looking at my hubby for a long time when he suggested (dictated) the name he wants for our boy. It was the same name he claims to have invented when he was just in high school. He hates the thought of calling our baby Junior, but he named our kid after the alter ego he created.

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Motherhood changed me. He is my rock and my treasure. Even at an early age, he already shows promise of being a great person someday.

I thank God for the blessing, and I thank my hubby for the seed.

It’s the end of the year again. There are certain trends that never fail to amuse me as we reach this part of the calendar.

So here are the trends I’m talking about:

1. Employees rejoice the coming of the Christmas bonus, because of the following reasons:

• they have been waiting to leave the company all year but decided to do it after they get the year-end cash (smart!)
• splurge on stuff. They won’t be leaving their jobs any time soon, so why save up?

2. TV networks are preparing for the year-end news special they will air-out at New Year’s Eve, which will always include the year’s SONA (state of the nation address, by the current Phil. president).

3. In relation to 2, a lot of celebrities who have “made it” during the year will make speeches all over the media platforms to promote themselves in the coming year.

4. New Year resolutions are re-established by hopeful people, without remembering that it’s the exact same ones they made the year before.

5. People are flocking the mail posts a month before Christmas in anticipation of the mail delays that will come during the holidays.

6. Predictions by astrologers and psychics will fly all over the place. Suddenly we are again accosted by fortune tellers that we see only during the end-of-the-year (they tactfully hide during the year so as not to face their predictions that failed to come true).

7. The printing presses are going crazy producing new calendars, corporations and families are making personalized ones.

8. The garbage truck people are smiling more and more as the holidays come, sending out subliminal messages of “you know what to do or your trash is yours… for a year!”

9. Embittered people try to clean out their slates in the season of forgiveness, removing grudges and hate… but failing to save the most important lesson that the year has taught them: who they should not trust. It’s a sad cycle.

10. Children are the happiest people during this time. And those who were once kids will observe this more and more as the years go by.

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The main theme all over the world during this time is “change”. I find it funny because changes can be installed anytime during the year, but everyone waits for this time to promote them… just because of the idea that everyone else is in the same mindset.

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I. BS Biology?

My parents kinda thought of my decision to take up BS Biology in a prestigious university as something like “OMG, my kid’s gonna be a doctor”. Sadly, being a doctor was not the reason why this course was my first and ONLY choice in the UP application form. I took it because it was the only course I could think of that will let me delve directly into life and what the meaning of life is (What gives people life? Why do people get sick and die? Why do we live then just die in the end?). That, and also reading about things I want to know about but will probably be clueless about for the rest of my life if I don’t study it.

I probably should have took up Philosophy. I thought of it then saw that the curriculum involved a whole sub-course in Logic. I decided that the course would probably mess me up a bit because I wasn’t very logical (hey, I was 16 years old then, gimme a break! *laughs*). And so, I stuck with the course that will involve dissecting things, finding factors that contribute to the quality of life a person has and getting direct, empirical answers (will this extract kill the specimen or won’t it?… Ohhh, it is fatal!).

II. Soul and Spirituality?
As I went on with my scientific studies, I accidentally met the following concepts while book-bumming at National Bookstore: spirituality, soul, spirit, higher-being and the paranormal. These were stuff that I couldn’t directly relate to my growing knowledge of the natural sciences, so I went deeper into that world of parascientific concepts and other-wordly encounters.

I was raised as a Catholic and was sent to an exclusive girls’ school run by nuns. That helped a bit in understanding the theories I read about. But I also encountered Paganism and Atheism, which weren’t exactly discussed in the religious lectures I listened to in high school and at home. I read a half-dozen books about the occult before realizing that I was hooked.

III. Balancing My Beliefs

Science taught me how a human body works and contributes to a person’s life quality. However, spirituality, the paranormal and religion provide the meaning to that life, imbuing the purpose in an otherwise robotic existence. What we do with our flesh and spirit directly dictates to how we want our life to be, how we relate to people and why we even want to live again for the next day.

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I finally decided to write my halloween post (in broad daylight, with AJ’s Dora the Explorer video on full blast sound to block out any other-wordly sounds). This is the real ghost encounter of my lola Aning (my great aunt).

Read this story at evilwoobie.com

I have news feeds in my browser and am no stranger to depressing news about this country’s economy, political instability and civil discord. Hence, in my morning net journeys I have decided to blog only about current events that are socially relevant and/or those that are personal to me.

This breaking news from inquirer.net belongs to both.

We often hear about Filipinos ranting over the hard life we suffer as a race. But it is rare that a Filipino will kill himself over it. A normal, psychologically stable citizen of this nation lives through the day either ranting or smiling. We whine so much about a lot of things, but it takes so little to make us laugh.

This is what I call “Filipino Optimism”. We find the energy to smile regardless of the odds that are against us. As I’ve been telling my OFW brother who suffers the same discrimination that our other OFWs suffer in a foreign land, our race’s innate ability to make light of things is one of the many outstanding traits that make us a hardy bunch. We do not find it odd that people are laughing as a group, or that people smile as we approach them. We smile with our families and friends even if we only have enough in our pockets to get us through the day.

This is the one thing that sets us apart. Our spirit. Our positive views and belief in a better future. Let’s not lose that hope.