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From Iligan to Cagayan de Oro. Sunset.
From Iligan to Cagayan de Oro. Sunset.
When we were graduating in college, we had to go on a retreat (I have shared this story a dozen times but I want to share again). During the last day of the retreat there was this activity where the nun, who facilitated the activity, laid down pictures on the floor and told us to pick one photo among the dozens and go back to our seats. Since I was sitting at the back I was one of those people who had to pick last.
When it was my turn I looked at all the pictures and was a bit overwhelmed. What is this activity for? Is this a kind of test? If I pick that photo of an old lady and her grand daughter (probably) what will that say about me?
There were pictures of kids, families, old people, solo and group pictures. After much thought, I decided on the picture of crowd of people taken from a bird’s eye view. I was drawn to the picture and so I shrugged and picked it off the floor.
I went back to the seat and waited for the next instruction. When everyone had their turn, the facilitator told us to look at the picture we have in our hands. To look closely at the photo for they will be the people we will be helping in our lifetime. I was looking at photo of a crowd of people looking up at me.
Or maybe she said that we will be the “angels” for these people that we have chosen. I glanced at the photos that my classmates have on their hands: they were mostly of a group of two or threes. I thought, oh my! why the heck did I choose this photo among the ones on the floor? Will I run for office to be able to make a difference? Join volunteer groups (Is there money in that, I thought. What will my mother think?)? Will I need to be a millionaire? Or billionaire?
I don’t know if my classmates still remember that retreat but I do. That’s saying a lot coz I have the memory of Dory.
Every now and then I remembered. But for a long time it became just that, a memory.
Days passed by and I still haven’t ran for office (as if), didn’t join any volunteer groups (I thought about it a lot though, I hope that counts, I thought) and most of all I’m not yet a millionaire. How in heck will I fulfill my destiny? Not that I thought about it a lot. More of a few seconds at a time. I admit, I am not the most selfless individual of the world.
Then one or two years ago my friend Miera, a classmate from nursing school, texted me. She just started working as a school nurse at her hometown (I thought the school nurse is someone who just stays at the clinic and waits for those people who faints or has fever) and she shared to me her experiences.
Miera as a school nurse doesn’t stay at one school as I thought but instead goes from school to school in her district. At that time she was the only nurse so she had to go to many schools most of them in remote locations.
She told me that one school are in dire need of help. She then point blank asked me for help. I don’t know why she asked me of all people but that’s what she did.
As a lowly employed nurse at a private hospital I couldn’t think of a thing on how to help. Miera knows that my hobby is photography so she suggested I visit her place and take pictures so we can post them on the Internet. Maybe through the pictures someone will be moved and help.
Then a few months passed, years too, probably.
One day, I met someone at a virtual game called smallworlds (She won’t like me disclosing who she is, so I won’t). Anyway, we got to be tight friends. One day we were talking about real life and she told me that her family sends packages to the Philippines to give to the remote villages/schools in Misamis Oriental. The conversation eventually led to what I promised Miera before.
I guess prayers does work. I prayed for someone who has altruistic motivation and I met this friend- at a virtual game of all places. I prayed that I can help Miera, and last Monday I had that chance. Through my friend (Share the blessings), and through Miera and the Teachers in charge of the schools at Del Monte, Talacogon we have started the ball rolling.
It started with that retreat activity years before and started again with the giving of used clothings, shoes and chocolates at Talacogon, Agusan del Norte. Giving is apparently not a one time deal. And I feel thankful that in my own little way I can help.
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can. ~Sydney Smith
10 Pinoy Pool Tournament
Photo from: Food network
In my life the dreaded act of dieting and I have never met. I have always been skinny and had the privilege of eating what I want without visible consequence.
Oftentimes people would make me eat more rather than less but now I have to be more conscious of what I eat. It wouldn’t have been bad but my friend Lillly Em-em showed me what she ate for dinner earlier. A Coop’s pizza. And because I like to google things that interest me I spent hours looking at Coop’s pizza, the reviews and then its competitor(?) Abbot’s Pizza and the reviews at yelp’s as if I can do anything about it.
The googling for the best pizza in the greater LA area had me in turn searching for the best American foods where I landed on food network’s article “50 states, 50 breakfast.”
The article is full of great looking photos of food and the places where I might be able to partake on a good, memorable breakfast meal. Food photography kinda took stage for a bit but food eventually stayed foremost in my mind.
While deliberating whether to eat a Calda’s pizza, yummy yummy’s or that new pizza place across BDH (Not to mention those crazy new Greenwich pizza offerings) I broke down and popped three crunch chocolates in my mouth. I thought it would satisfy my craving but no. I just had to click that food article forward, and forward till I succumbed to the temptation. I glanced inside our ref and saw the egg white left over from my yema attempt and cooked me a yolk-less omelet.
It looked really good. I sauteed tomato and onions and then poured the egg and mixed them all together in the pan (not exactly the omelet I was aiming for). It was kind of messy especially when I smothered the food with banana ketchup but it was my kind of food. Yum.
I thought about taking a quick photo to show you. It made me pause as I weighed things for a sec but my hand thought I was too slow and dug in, and Sandy did too. Hee hee.
I had a slice of Bacon and cheese pizza from Pizza hut, an order of takoyaki and I also had a full dinner. Yet my stomach is not content. It used to be given free reign but no more. This is why I am having trouble holding myself back.
And guess what? It’s now 12.21 am and I’m still thinking about food. This time I am contemplating on that quick cooking pancit canton in the pantry.
I just had my first ever fight with someone at the Internet. It started when I joined a virtual world game called Smallworlds. I find it extremely entertaining game and I love the graphics. I find it better than the other popular virtual game in facebook because you can do more things in Smallworlds.
Teleportation is a common ability. You are able to change your appearance in a snap. And when you are in a tight spot you can make other people’s head grow watermelon-huge, or turn someone into a vampire. Among others.
This is me playing a vampire
Earlier tonight, when I logged in, I was immediately brought to my apartment at SW. It was a newly renovated and furnished one. I admired my stuff for a moment before deciding to do a mission. By the way, the view from outside my window is amazing!
There were a lot of choices: A Halloween mission (I got to be classmates with Edward and Bella), be a character of a twisted fairy tale, go on a treasure hunt, clean apartments, make chocolates, paint, play quick draw, play pool or mini golf, be cursed, etc. etc.
In the end I chose to go on a friend finder quest. Making friends as you make money seems like a fantastic deal. The first stop was to a popular hang out, Rachel’s tea room.
Rachel’s Tea House (as Luningning)
I teleported near the entrance and saw a couple of people already partying. There were fairies, skater people, a guy with his head spinning, a purple guy, ordinary people. Colorful.
The place itself is very nice. Pretty rose wallpapers, teas served in china, antique furniture. One would think people who stay there are civilized.
But, as I navigated my way through the crowd I barely escaped a fire bolt thrown in my general direction. Rachel’s was turning into Mysterio’s.
You can’t get hurt when you get hit. So I was fearless in walking straight to the furthest corner of the room to observe the going-ons. I find people usually hanging out at Rachel’s friendly. Missions held there are not so hard, so people aren’t as uptight compared to other places.They are there to have fun and to make friends.
After a moment of being alone a woman with dark straight hair came towards me. We got to talking. I clicked on her avatar and saw that she was a newbie. Level 1 all the way.
I asked her if she finished her basic training yet. She laughed and said she canceled it. I asked her if she was on a mission. She was. She was on the same mission as I was. We immediately added each other up as friends, giggling.
While we were still chatting, sitting side by side, a guy with spiky hair came over towards us. He wasn’t sleazy like other guys. I know, because he was just minding his business, quietly sitting across from us. Unlike some of them that I’ve met.
All of a sudden a purple ray went straight to him. Hitting him directly to the noggin. The spiky haired guy turned purple all over and went rigid. I know how it feels getting hit. Aside from looking stupid with sparks going all around you turn into a single color, depending on the kind of ray gun that hit you. And worse, people usually laughs… at you. If you have an aversion of being a laughingstock you’ll understand.
That’s me.
I ignored it. My new friend also ignored it. It might only be harmless fun. We chatted some more about missions. Doing these mission stuff is very important. Accomplishing them means money. Money to buy those wands those couple of evil fairies are using, for example.
I think power had gone straight to their head.
Finally my new friend had to apologize to me because the rays and lightning bolts were were getting out of hand. Worst, the quiet guy was hit twice again. The guy stood up finally fed up with the attacks. He told the crazy fairies to cut out the zapping. It was really rude of them.
My friend said,” I’m sorry Bituin, there are a lot of dumb asses here. Its been going on for a while ever since I walked in.”
When you say something in the SmallWorld World it is posted as a bubble on top of our heads. My new friend who was still a newbie blurted that out not really thinking that that people could still listen in on our conversation.
There’s a “whisper” feature where you can say something without letting other people listen in on the conversation. But since she was new, my new friend didn’t know about it.
The moment she said it, two of the fairies, I mean three of them, rushed towards us, nearly bumping into the guy who was still shaking off the effects spell they cast on him. From what was a formerly quiet corner of the room, a crowd suddenly formed around us.
“Did you just called us dumb asses, Dok?” One of the fairies to my right side confronted my new friend.
I stood up. The both of us stood up. My friend was probably shaking to her pants in fear.
I remembered a story told to me by John, who is also new- about a woman who kept on hitting him with a similar contraption when he first played the game. It was one of the reason he was turned off from playing Smallworlds. With that in mind I got ready.
Seeing the three pink fairies (Who acted like hags) ganging up on us, newbies, I attacked first. I grabbed my one and only weapon, a clear bottle containing a man’s decapitated head inside, called a bubble head— targetted the hag who was waving her wand threatening my new friend and threw it towards her. My avatar did a pirouette, one hand extending a wand, turned towards my target then a bright light burst through its tip and Bull’s eye.
A dramatization
The pink witch’s head turned ginormous. Her short silver haired head blew up like an almost-to-the-brink-of-bursting balloon.
When one person turns you purple or make your head grow big, the unwritten rule is you laugh. Act as if it doesn’t bother you. No harm comes to your character anyway.
She laughed.
Her companions laughed.
She laughed some more saying that her head looks cool. It wasn’t really. Not only did she have a literally big head, figuratively she was also: A big head. A Guinness world record pumpkin sized head.
The situation could have been diffused right there and then. Laughing can calm down a tense situation… or maybe just adds suspense to it.
But I had to open my trap and said:
“You have a fat face.”
She flew closer towards me. Her wings fluttered excitedly. I don’t have anywhere else to go to coz I was sitting at the back of the room. I was trapped.
“Did you just call me a fat face?”
She was probably shrieking by then. If there was an emoticon for that I would have heard it right there.
She fired off one blast from her wand, which unfortunately, hit a guy wearing glasses that, in perfect cosmic timing, walked in front of me that very moment.
Things started to spin out of control and I panicked.
“Your head did grow big,” I said, before teleporting out in a hurry.
I’m sorry to say I couldn’t and didn’t stay to defend my helpless friend/s after that. I mean, what purpose would it do? Calling names is taboo (also hitting people with ray guns when they say stop) and I didn’t want to be banned at Rachel’s. Plus, that was my one and only weapon available. A one time deal. I feel bad I wasn’t able to check on my new friend after.
So that’s one exciting moment of my virtual life. I don’t think my heart could handle all the drama if it happens again.
P.s.
I cut short my hair, change the color of my shirt to stay underground.
Too bad my name is quite distinctive (Bituin), so I had to create another avatar who I used to buy all the armaments I could afford.
The End.
It started with a weird dream. In my dream I was smiling and the next I knew my mouth was filled with teeth that fell off from my gums. It wasn’t painful or anything like that. But the feeling of my mouth filling with these pebble like things, and my bare gums was awful. I could still feel my pulled out teeth even now, so alien in my mouth. Have you ever had a dream like that before?
I woke up soon after. I remembered my old nana telling me that its bad omen to dream about teeth falling. It means death. To counter it from happening one should bite into something wooden, or bite a comb or to talk about it with someone. It felt silly biting my comb and being all superstitious all of a sudden, but my vividly horrible dream did away with that. I played it safe and did all three.
I was meeting with my barkada (my group of friends) later at Anne Grace’ house that day. I told them about my dream. They were all properly sympathetic.
The creepy factor of my dream must’ve been the reason we found ourselves trading ghost stories.
My friend Juselle told us that she once read a black book and since then she can now see supernatural beings around us. The black book supposedly opened her third “eye.”
She confessed that while we were travelling from Cagayan someone was with us hitching a ride. We all shrieked, asking her who the hitchhiker was most close to.
Kimberly also shared her recent experience with a ghost. She was alone in the living room (the room we were presently in) with her laptop, busy with facebook when she heard someone snored. It was loud and right in front of her. She immediately turned the laptop off and ran upstairs. Along the way she passed her older cousin going down wanting a drink of water. A moment after that, her cousin Lorna came running back up, babbling about ghosts, and glasses clinking and stuff.
Anne Grace, my no nonsense friend was next. I admit I was surprised that she also has a personal experience about these things. I always see her as practical and not prone to perception problems (my idea about people who can “see”).
“When I was maybe six or seven, my father was still alive, we were playing there,” she gestured to a neighbour’s house. “They weren’t there yet, it was mostly a vacant field, filled with grasses and trees. Anyway, I remember my father was playing with me when I saw a man staring at us. He was a big man, dark. He was sitting under a huge tree. I told my father about him. It’s a rare thing to have strange people near our house before because our house used to be quite isolated. My father took one look at the man and he immediately covered my head with the towel he had with him grabbed her and ran towards the house. You must understand, I was very young. I didn’t find it strange at all to see a man with only half his body, guts spilling out, still alive. Staring at us.”
Anne Grace was really a surprise. It might be a male manananggal she saw. A manananggal is usually a female. By day they are ordinary looking. By night or during full moon they leave half of their body, waist down, in a safe place and the rest of her flies using her dark, leathery bat-like wings looking for pregnant women to feast upon. Manananggal has this long, thin tongues capable of burying through all our bodily orifices. This is what they use to suck dry the fetuses inside pregnant women.
According to stories by my old nana used to tell me manananggal can only be killed when people finds the vulnerable half and puts salt over it. Salt is painful for them. If they can’t join with their body when the sun comes up, they die. I admit, I really didn’t think I’d find a person who actually saw a manananggal and a male one at that.
It was my time to share. My friend’s talk about half bodied demons reminded me of my own story. When I was in Manila a few years back, I stayed in a dormitory that used to be a hospital. It was during my nursing practicum affiliation. Before we left for Manila we were already filled with stories of ghosts, of white ladies. One would think that only students with the macabre sense of humor would indulge in this bit of fun. But even clinical instructors, teachers that went with the group also shared their own experiences.
I was staying in a non airconditioned room in the fourth floor of St. Vincent’s Dormitory. There were a total of eight girls sharing the room. There were four double decks and I was in the top deck smacked close to a huge window. I spent some nights briefly entertaining the thought of a flying manananggal hovering outside while I sleep.
In Butuan, my hometown, I’m not afraid of manananggal. According to my estimation they are mostly in the Visayas and in Manila (I don’t know where I got the idea). I am most afraid of the aswangs. Since I’m in Manila, and sleeping in the vicinity of a huge window the flying manananggal was foremost in my mind.
Of course it was just at the back of my mind I don’t want to tell the world that despite my “education” I still fear the mythical monsters and ghosts, you know. But anyway, fear is fear. We stayed in that room for two weeks and during that time some things started to happen- which I, in my rational self, attributed to mass hysteria. What with all the ghost stories that are flying around, people are bound to see something.
But then there are physical manifestations. Things like a big puddle of water in the middle of our room when we woke up one morning. Undergarment that got wet without anyone pouring water over them. It was only when we moved to a different room that one of my roommates told us that she heard the pitter patter of tiny feet walking in circles one night. I asked her if she ever saw something. She said she didn’t because she just closed her eyes until she fell asleep.
I didn’t expect really to have a firsthand experience with these things. But I did. I saw my first ghost in that same old room. It was nearly ten o’clock, I was trying to sleep burying myself under my blanket.
I remember that the bright fluorescent light was still on, and people were still talking. It must’ve gotten too hot because I pulled my blanket off for a moment. This was when I saw a girl with long black hair and long white dress standing below my bed facing me.
What they say about opening their third eye must be true. I haven’t told this to anyone but just before I fall asleep I still see the girl standing still in the corner of my room every night.
