Bouree 1 from Cello Suite

An attempt!

Merry Christmas

I can’t remember my age when I received the most unforgettable Christmas gift from my father. It was a gift wrapped box (I can’t tell what’s inside) and my father told me not to open it until the Noche Buena time. The box was on the table, and I kept looking at it. I shook it, I peeked at it until at last I can’t take it anymore; I unwrapped it.

It was a string powered (pull the string to make it fly) helicopter. I was ecstatic. I didn’t know how to fly it but just holding the helicopter made me very happy. When my father arrived, he found out what I did, and he became angry. Not really angry but disappointed, but he looked angry to me.

But he took me by the hand and we went to the vacant lot across our house, and there he flew the helicopter. My brother was there and they each took turn flying the toy helicopter while I was breathless chasing it, picking it up, giving it back to them, and then joyfully watched while they flew the toy helicopter over and over again...I can’t tell how many hours or minutes my father and brother flew the helicopter but it seemed long enough to make a lasting impression on me.

It was the most expensive gift I received from my father because it was the gift that captured my imagination. Of course the toy was cheap, and my father had bought more expensive Christmas gifts like shoes, shirts, pants etc. But as a child, the value of a gift is not measured in money; it is measured in the joy that it could bring. My father could have given a branded shirts or pants, and I wouldn’t have cared about it because I didn’t care about my looks then. But that helicopter made me think of flight and that’s something money can’t buy, gifts that made me imagine things, made me think of things beyond my understanding then.

I was saddened when I found the toy chopper inside our chicken coop broken. It was really my brother who enjoyed it, but I did not complained….hmmm, maybe I whined.
Christmas has different meanings especially in today’s materialistic world, but for children the best gift is still the gift of time, of simply sharing the warmth and happiness of family and of the season. It is not expensive yet it lasts a long, long time.


Merry Christmas!

Chronicler Regional Presscon 2007

Regional Presscon

Our campus joined this year’s regional tertiary press conference held at Angel Hills, Tagaytay City on December 9-11. Although I didn’t qualify for the Luzonwide (I didn’t even make it to the top ten lists!), our paper garnered four citations in page lay out design, news page, feature and literary sections.

Rommel, our artist and Kathrina, our Editor in chief, news writer and editorial writer in Filipino, will be part of the representatives of region 4A in the Luzonwide tertiary press conference to be held in February next year at Tugegarao, Cagayan.

What can I say but, what a dismal performance from the oldest writer of the group. Waaahhhhhh!!!!

The Lord had need of me

As the transcontinental train zipped past the scenery, an elderly bishop was telling a young parson fresh out of divinity school the story of his eventful life. He then turned to the young cleric and asked him to tell the story of his vocation.

“Oh, that’s very simply told,” he smugly replied. “All I can say is that the Lord had need of me.”

“That’s a remarkable coincidence, young man,” observed the bishop. “So far as I can remember, only once in the gospel did the Lord ever say that He had need of anything. In Luke 19:34 on the occasion of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He said he had need of an ass.”

So true...of course it apllies to rear ends in the church too

City Blues

It’s been a long time since I have been out of our small town. That’s because I hate traveling to the city. The smog is oppressing, the sight depressing and the noise is deafening. So, when I was asked to deliver something to the city, I was not surprised to find out that there’s another supermall being built. On board the jeepney, as I was looking at the scaffoldings and the workmen busy with their work, I remembered what a friend said to me, “One of the requirements for a municipality to be upgraded to a city is a supermall.”

It has been observed by many that it is ironic that as the standard of living in the Philippines deteriorates, the more supermalls are being built. As the buying power of the ordinary Filipinos drop, the more stalls are being erected.

As I was observing the construction, I can only shake my head because it seems to me that supermalls are really churches promoting the religion of materialism.

Maybe it’s because I am poor, and that looking at goods, gadgets being sold in the stores arouses that primal…hmmm…what do I call this? This primal desire or drive to have, to show off, and this depressed me because I know it is wrong especially if I don’t have the money and most especially if the money I am spending (Oh how wish that this is the case) did not come from my own labor. How easy to spend money that is not yours.

Maybe it’s the gloom of Christmas…How I wish I am a child again.

My Classmates cheerleading to Vivaldi

Actualy they are dancing to the laest dance craze but I hate that kind of music. Maybe it's becuase I'm old, so I put in Vivaldi's concerto in C major.