It is so exhausting to deal with people who refuse to grow up, so I said in a previous blog.

The Iraq hostage crisis our country has gone through the past couple of weeks was a very emotional issue for me.  Angelo dela Cruz is a father of 8, and the thought of what his family must have gone through, not knowing whether they would still see him alive, bothered me somewhat.
 
I am no political analyst, and I do not care for Philippine politics at all.  The nation was divided when GMA ordered the pull-out of our troops from Iraq in order to save dela Cruz's life, and as expected, she was not spared from the critical eye and harsh words of Filipinos across the world.  Though many supported this, many raised eyebrows.  For the president, it was a no-win situation.  This decision will undoubtedly have repercussions on our economy, among other things, but regardless of the opinions of many others, I applaud GMA for her gutsy move.  For once, a Filipino was not compromised in the attempt to fix a national crisis.  For once, an innocent masa was prioritized before an international "ally".  For once, the plight of Filipino OFWs all over the world was recognized with more than lip service.
 
A family somewhere in Pampanga will sleep soundly tonight.  They may not care much about financial aid from the US or the war against terrorism, but the life of a loved one was spared, and that to them, is priceless.

I have known him for quite some time now, and I never even looked twice.  Whenever I see him lately, though, I turn into a giggly school girl with a crush all over again.  It's been a long time since I've actually even remotely liked someone, and the world DOES seem a bit rosier.  It's nothing serious, but it's a pleasant change from all the espresso I've been tasting lately.

My nephew Pablo got a visit from his cousin Euna. It's so refreshing to see two kids at play. It makes you forget about everything else, and for a moment, it transports you back to the time when nothing was of consequence.

Last night, I was on my couch in my room, resting my tired calves from the intense badminton game earlier that evening while I watched Oprah. As they talked about the alarmingly incresing number of suburban teenage girls entering prostitution, I heard a faint scratching sound from the corner of my room. I peered over my dresser which partially blocked my view. Suddenly, Alfred appeared from behind my pretty green storage box and scurried out of my room, passing through the small space between my door and the floor. The sight was enough to send chills down my spine. I am very territorial about my room, and the idea of sharing it with a rodent is utterly horrifying. I placed a sheet of flypaper by the door and dropped a small cookie chunk in on it. After a few minutes, Alfred was walking over the flypaper trying to grab the cookie. I couldn't believe my eyes, it knew how to avoid the sticky surface! As soon as it got hold of his prize, though, he started to flee, but it's tail got stuck. I guess it realized that it wasn't a good thing, because it dropped the cookie and started making sqeaky noises. Yesss! I finally caught the damn thing. But my celebration was very short-lived. Yes, I trapped the sucker, but I had no idea how to throw it out. Ew. Just the though made me shiver again. I paniced when I saw it trying to wriggle its tail free. My sister heard me scream, so she peered from inside her room. When she saw my predicament, she suggested that I trap it with an upside-down bucket, so I did. Good idea. At this point, the mouse was able to Wriggle free from the fly paper, but it was still trapped inside the bucket. Great. Now I really didn't know what to do. I put on some decent clothes and went downstairs. I called the building maintenence boy and asked him to do something about it. To my horror, brought a kind of cement tool with which to kill it. The picture of rodent blood on our floor made me suddenly queasy. Luckily, he resorted to transferring it to a garbage bag and brought it downstairs. Whether or not Alfred still lives at this moment, I do not care to find out.

As I disinfected the spot where the bucket served as Alfred's prison with Lysol, I looked back at my Jessica Simpson moment and vowed to

1) always make sure there is fly paper lying around the condo,
2) treat the maintenance people well all the time, lest another incident like this happens, and
3) disinfect, disinfect, and disinfect.


*Note: "Alfred" was a term coined in college, when we had a rodent problem in our dorm. They say that mice know when they are being talked about, hence the baptism.

It's my sister's birthday today (yesterday actually, since it's already past midnight). We had dinner out, then played badminton with friends. It was great to spend a non-catty evening together. In spite of us fighting all the time, she is still my bestfriend, and there is hardly anything about me that she doesn't know.

We both have our own issues to deal with, some of them so deep-rooted, that it will take a lot of time to mend. I am very thankful for nights like this. At a time when spending time with family is no longer an everyday luxury, occassions like this are gold. My sisters mean the world to me, and nothing is worth more.

My philosophy is that we are only liscenced to make a certain mistake once or twice before we have to succumb to learning the lesson. Beyond that, it is either some people enjoy having their faces touch the asphalt, or they are plain uncapable of taking responsibility for their actions.

It is so depressing to be around people who never grow up.

My sister and I went to Pampanga this weekend to visit our other sister, our oh-so-cute-but-oh-so-pilyo nephew and the rest of our relatives. Athough we lived there a good part of our lives, and we still make it a point to make the trip every so often, there are some things that still surprise us everytime we do stay over. Most of the time, we just laugh, cringe, or we are just plain dumbfounded at how strange our family can get.

My grandmother, who is a little over 80, is getting really forgetful. My sister who lives there now told us about the time our grandmother literally called her about six or seven times at fifteen minute intervals to ask her the same question. I can imagine how maddening that is. Everytime we go there, she asks my other sister and I where we live and who cooks for us.

It is difficult for our relatives there to grasp the concept of two young women living alone in a condo with no parents (grandparents, titos, titas, pamangkins, maids...). The most frequently asked question is, "Paano kayo kumakain? Sino'ng nagluluto?" and "Naglilinis ba kayo?"

My tita who lives with my grandparents is four months pregnant. Although her belly is getting more and more noticable everytime we see her, the grandparents don't know yet. When we asked her why she hasn't said anything, she said, "Di pa naman nila tinatanong eh." I guess they'll find out when she gives birth.

My other tita told my sister who is in pre-med, "Alam mo, mag-nurse ka nalang, tapos mag-States ka." My sister actually almost lost her temper then. My cousin, who knows I am jobhunting right now, told me, "Ayaw mo'ng mag-med rep? Ok ang benefits nun!" No offense to the nurses and the med reps out there, but... um... ok, let's say it again. No offense to the nurses and med reps out there. Period.

Meals are served like clockwork there. I have the impression that people live to eat and do everything else on the side. It is a crime not to eat breakfast at 8, lunch at 12, and dinner at 7. Literally, before each meal, my lolo gives a roll call and screams at everyone to get our asses to the table and eat. This is usually when my grandmother asks us her usual line of questions and repeats them around 3 or 4 times during the entire course of the meal. Most of the time, my tito and tita answer for us, since they already know that my sister goes grocery shopping once a week, we have our laundry picked up and delivered, and that I usually clean the place.

It can make me want to pull every strand of hair out of my scalp sometimes, but wierd as they are, they are still family and we love them to bits. I guess that we are the wierd ones in their eyes. In spite of all this, having a place like this to come home to is still one of the things we have that makes us very grateful. Nothing beats entering a room filled with relatives whom you know will take care of you no matter what. God bless their souls.

By the way, this is only the mother's side. The paternal relatives are a whole different story.