TOO many CHOICES, just MOVIES and STUFFS

 I am checking my Netflix account (paid by my daughter) and I notice that I have accumulated scores of series and movie  titles in the "continue watching" panel. These are titles that I clicked, watched, a few seconds later got bored with, then clicked another title, got bored and so on.

  

This is frustrating because it seems that my attention span has dwindled to a few seconds, and I can not get to the point where the interest builds up.

I miss the days when I could focus on one movie, one book, one task. Now, I can't decide on a choice whether it be a movie, a book, and musical piece to study and learn because there's just too many of them available online now.

There must be name for this condition. I mean, everything has a name now.

I Googled "I cant decide disorder" and there it was:

 Aboulomania (from Greek a– 'without', and boulē 'will') is a mental disorder in which the patient displays pathological indecisiveness. It is typically associated with anxiety, stress, depression, and mental anguish, and can severely affect one's ability to function socially. 

Well, maybe not that bad. Its just that.

I don't want to waste my time watching  a bad show. The Last movie I saw in full in weeks was "I Care a Lot" with Rosamund Pike and Tyrrion Lannister (yup, he is Tyrrion to me now), and I had to fast forward it by 10 seconds every time the scenes became dragging. This is not good. Just like in music, silence is important, it builds up anticipation that leads to the climax. 

I have lost appreciation in the art of anticipating, of waiting for the denouma, the revelation, whatever it is called,  because the power to fast forward movies, music and even books has been granted to me by technology.

REMINISCING:

I grew up in the 80's and 90's before ICT era. We had a cabinet type Zenith vacuum tube TV which was later replaced by the transistor type NIVICO 12 inch TV. This was the boob tube that I had spent my teen age and adulting years with until it conked out in 2000s. It served the family for almost two decades.

There were only five channels then BBC 2, Maharlika TV 4, IBC 13, RPN 9 and GMA 7. Almost all of them had limited airing time with the exception of RPN that screened midnight movies. I was an insomniac, so I had the TV by myself and since there were no other channels that aired on graveyard shift, I had no choice but to watch what's being shown. 

I saw eclectic collection of movies from Mel Brooks classic Young Frankenstein, The Last Time I saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor, Bertollucci's The Last Emperor, to Richard Attenborough's Life on Earth. 

I also devoured paperbacks like there's no tomorrow, I could finish a James Michener novel in a day but now I could hardly get through a 2 minute Esquire article.

Anyway, I think most people have indecisive moments and get by normally. Its just that this is made worse by the fact that there too many options now especially with the internet. So unlike 20 years ago when it was so boring in the afternoons that one can learn and play a musical instrument within a week, or read a tome in a day, or got to have a lot of good and unforgettable time with friends chatting in street corners just wasting time hanging around, looking at the surroundings, observing people, listening to music, singing along to the accompaniment of a badly tuned guitar, being in the moment, things move so fast now. 

People still hang around now but they are trapped, mesmerized by a small screen. Like me.

Boredom is important, the right one, that is. The time to think about nothing for ithout it, we cannot declutter the mind. Boredom is the space and playground where the mind gets creative.

Time Relativity and Old Age and nonsense

I have this fascination with mathematical formulas and I thought about or rather wished that I could have the facility to understand or at least catch glimpse of what all these symbols and how they operate. But no, they are and will continue to be hieroglyphics to me.

In my grade school days, I thought I was good with math, or at least not that bad at it, that was until I graduated from grade 6 and had my first encounter with algebra, then geometry to trigonometry and from then on, I gave up trying to figure out what all these symbols were about. Happy enough to have the arithmetic skill to count change.

But the fact that I was bad at it did not stop my fascination at the concept behind these seemingly powerful numbers and symbols, which are really nothing but shorthand for something that will take too long to explain using the English alphabets.

 As one of my former math professor said, "the shorter the formula the more difficult or complicated the concept behind it is", which didn't really mean anything to my numerically challenged brain, at all. NOTHING!

I guess the most famous formula is Einstein's E=mc2. Which I don't know what it is all about and all my introductory understanding of are from science fiction movies and stories.  From which I gathered that underneath the letters are stuffs that changed physics how we view reality from space, black holes, Uranus, etc. and of course time.

Time for us mere mortals (who are not given the magical powers to understand the mathematics of physics) is the passing of moments, the rotation of the earth, the passing season, ageing, white hairs, rheumatoid arthritis,  etc. It is fixed and only moves forward, according to common sense and classical Newtonian physics.

When Einstein came along and shocked the physics world with his theories, time became another dimension, space is not space anymore, it is now space-time. Time can be slowed down with velocity. Also his theories opened up the possibility, at least theoretically speaking, of time travel. Here I will stop because everything else from here is dark matter, as in dark. I have no idea about.

Philosophically, there is the idea by Immanuel Kant which says that time has no objective reality: "it is subjective and ideal, and originates from the mind's nature in accord with the stable scheme, as it were, for coordinating everything sensed externally." Simply put, time is not real, it is just how our brains are programmed to understand reality. 

But for all its mystery time is very real, at least the passing of it. I can feel it in my bones, in my mind, and in my heart (the organ, I mean). In my youth I was unmindful of its passing. its like a blur. time seemed so slow back then. I want to skip my teens, the restrictions, and the awkwardness that came with it and jumped right into adulthood, job and freedom.

That was until I reached the age of 30. The days had shifted to the high gear, everything seemed to be twice as fast as before, days flew by so fast.

I am now into my late forties, two years short of my fifth decade, and things are starting to get blurry with speed. Its been that long? How long has it been since I freaked out my elderly neighbors by riling up their dogs and have the snarling beasts go and chasing after me and my friends? 

Now, I am the elderly neighbor who is freaked out when my dogs are teased by children.

I cannot slow down time but I can do things slowly.

Walk slowly.

Eat slowly.

Sit down and stand up slowly, aside from the fact that my joints hurt now.

There's an old Indian proverb that says, "sitting down is better than standing, lying down is better than sitting, sleeping is better than lying down, being dead is better..."

I guess as I grow older I am becoming less and less attached, more detached to things I can not control.

Or maybe, I am just a highly functioning depressed individual who has lost interest in everything except guitar, gardening, art, music...maybe not that depressed, just lazy.

But whatever the case maybe, I have always taken comfort to the fact I am still alive and trying my best to be in the moment as much as possible wherever I am, whatever my situation is and whatever mood I am in.

Scouting reminiscing

My pupils JM, Elgerald and Steve.

I learned a lot of things from the scouting movement during my elementary school days and up to now in my middle age I am still using the skills I learned from my former scout master Romeo Gonzaga, now retired.

One of the most useful scout skills is knot tying. I can tell if a person has a background in scouting by the way he uses the different kind of knots for different purposes. 

Bowline, regarded as the safest knot in the world, is also a scout's trademark. Aside from knots there are the lashes and hitches.

On our base with Maams Elsa and Cathy. Male teachers are still rare species in the elementary grades.

There are no more tent pitching contests today. Back in our days, tent pitching was one of the main events in scouting meets.

I still remember the hitches used in erecting this tent: tautline-hitch and two half-hitches.

We used the heavy canvass tents that required two tent poles, six pegs and ropes. It took two persons to erect one. Our scoutmaster trained us to raise a tent in under two minutes. We were timed and our performances were repeated until we get the best result. 

Living inside these tents was a challenge. It had a low headroom due to it's triangular shape and it had no mosquito net like the dome tents used by scouts today. But it we had fun sleeping in them during overnight camps.

I also learned the basics of compass reading in scouting and I wonder why they are not taught today. I guess the advent of GPS deemed compass reading an obsolete skill.

Girls scouts meeting before the activities.

But the fondest memory I have was that of cooking. First was firebuilding and then cooking fried egg on paper and roasting an egg pierced with a bamboo stick.

Sardines. There were no instant noodles, tuna, or coffee in sachets so the scouts staple food was canned sardines and kapeng barako or cocoa.

All the food had to be cooked that's why every patrol had to bring their own cooking and eating utensils, the real thing not the disposable plastics used today.

Anyway, I guess it is inevitable to compare my scouting experiences from today's scouting activities but my experience will not be different from what they are experiencing now. Like me, in the future, they will be telling stories, they will be reminiscing about their scouting days. 

Asthmatic Thoughts

I dread the -ber months. It is the official start of the Christmas season here in the Philippines and it's also the start of the change in the climate. It's the end of the rainy season and the shift from the wet southwest monsoon wind to the cold bearing wind of the north east monsoon that wrecks havoc to my (or many asthmatics) system. I don't know the reason why and I don't want to find out becuase its beyond my control.

So I am absent from work which left me with nothing to do but decompress and allow my body to recover. I try to avoid medications as much as possible because of the side effects with which hand tremors  from the ventulins being the worst. It's disconcerting to see a part of your body out of your control. I mean, I imagine the trembling hands grabbing my neck, strangling me and gauging my eyes out.

Who wants to get sick anyway because given the choice everybody would schedule their sickness to a date where it would be convenient to everybody. Another thing is the inconvenience an absent teacher brings to the whole team. Your work load is distributed to your fellow teachers free time.  We deal with children and a lot could go wrong, accidents, fist fights and it's not unusual to report to work the next day with a parent or two waiting for you at the hallway to report an incident of bullying. 

A few years ago I had the experience of dealing with a stabbing incident. It was an accident but it was hard to make parents realize that when they saw their children bleeding in the hand. The thing with parents is that their children have already forgiven and forgotten yet they are still angry. 

Another was when a scissor was plugged into a socket which the pupil thought was not connected to the power source resulting to the black out of the classroom. It was fortunate that the switch was not connected to the entire building else I would have got the ire of many teachers. I had to buy fuses to replace the busted ones.

The teachers job is difficult. I mean aside from teaching, academic development, records management, community relations, etc. they also carry some of the burden of their pupils. They are affected by their pupils difficult conditions. Even the toughest teacher would not be affected upon seeing a pupil head down while others are eating their lunch because of lack of money, or a pupil with bruises from beating, or a bully who came from a broken family. 

What makes teaching children a more difficult job? It's when the teacher's parental instinct kicks in. 

    

Teacher's day and the straw that broke the camels back

When the activities for this year's Teacher's Day were presented to us by our grade leader, my initial reaction was, what's going on? I thought it was a bad joke?  Well, I was hoping it was. Of course, I knew beforehand.

The idea that I would be performing "Spaghetti Pataas" remixed with anthemic 90's dance hit "Always" was blasphemous, traumatic even. Heck, I am not thinking of my personal dignity, but I am more concerned with the mental health of the audience. Anyway, I know the program meant well and one of its objectives was to showcase the teachers talent. But me dancing? Impossible....err...get me drunk first.

Speaking for my group, when each individual was asked what they wanted for Teacher's Day, the answers were as varied as the number of the members. One wanted a movie pass, another a lunch out, facial and beauty stuff, rest day, a date with a virgin err..I mean beer and gin, etc. I mean. it's our day, its like a birthday and there's the idea, no matter how illusory it was, that it was our day. But it was disconcerting when it was learned that the special day would become a fund raising day.

Personally, the idea was sacrilegious.

I think with the stress and work and the activities and programs and visitors and the children and the parents and the gamuts and gamuts of stuffs of everyday grind only to be told that a fund raising was at hand and that all teachers will perform, no exception as it was communicated to us, was the straw that broke the camel's back that prompted the teacher's club to seek a dialog with the school head. The dialog resulted to the clarifications of the misconceptions of the intentions for the occasion in the institution.  (Sapatos ni Syon) 

I am not privy to the conversation and as much as possible I try to stay away from school politics. I don't want to be a head ache to the school head and I am one of those employees who keep their head down,  report to work on time, go home on time. Invisibility is the survival mechanism I have adapted. 

But I was invited to a meeting and I have heard our school head's  side verbatim and the clarifications on class observation and her decision to stop the fund raising.  

Of course, it did not end there. the teachers consensus was to continue with the program. But I am not going to dance, I am willing to sweep the gym's floor to make up for dancing, it's very kind of our school head not to take my bet and simply smiled at me and said she will not ask me to do such thing.

It's tough to be a school head because the principal is the embodiment of the system that the teachers abhor so they are the ones who gets the flak from frustrations, stress, even the ire of the parents. Aside from the administrative jobs, they have to please the minor gods and the muses from the higher ups. I mean...they add to the stress.

I can't even put myself in their shoes because the complexity of the task add the thought of dealing with teachers who unlike pupils can fight back cowers me. The complexity of the task would kill me the first day.

Resentments build up due to stress, financial problems. personal problems, but in the end I believe that all of us are good people its just that we are all put under a lot of pressure that sometimes overwhelm us and turn us into something we don't want to be.

This event was bound to happen, its just a matter of time. It's a good thing it happened this early because the pressure has been released because below the straw that broke the camel's back are heavier and deeper stuffs that are pushing up and needs to be addressed with, and to which I say Caveat.

Reflection and refraction on yesterday's lesson

The flag ceremony was done.

ESP was over.

English time.

Sat down and thought for a while.

Checked my curriculum guide and saw that its writing time. Read the objectives in random and here are some of them in no particular order:

• Compose clear and coherent sentences using appropriate grammatical structures: -Subject-verb agreement
• Write a 4- paragraph composition showing -comparison and contrast 
• correct spelling - appropriate punctuation marks -transition/ signal words

Hmmm...I said to myself. What about these objectives? Put down the curriculum guide on the table and stared at the ceiling, nah, too fancy.

Looks at the rubrics with its categories/criteria and score. I prevented myself from throwing them out the windows because even I as a teacher, once presented with the categories and the numbers would be thinking about them rather what I want to write or say something about. To tell the truth some teachers, like me, would not even be able to meet these criteria.

So...

I stood in front of the class, asked them to get a whole sheet of paper and write a letter to their friends. 

Some pupils espoecially the girls were excited but many were hesitant and even protested loudly, much too loudl should I say, that they didn't know how to write or speak in English.

I started a monologue: "Dear children Filipinos are good with English. When an American goes to China and asks a Chinese where they could find a taxi, guess what? The common Chinese folk could not understand a single word and that foreigner would have to communicate using their hands, they have to act every word of it out. 

Here in the Philippines when an american asked anyone, even you, where to find a taxi, you can understand, you can reply in English. I mean you can say "over there, go to the left, etc." So, You are all good with English."

Ok! Start writing!

"Sir with margin?" 

"Sir can I write six letters?"

"Sir, what's the English for this or that?"

"Just write!"

"Sir, should we be writing to our friends here in the classroom or outside the classroom?"

"Write to any friend you like, in the classroom, outside  the classroom, imaginary, real, any friends..."

"Sir how many sentences?"

"What should write about?"

"Anything"

"Just write!"

After five minutes many are already passing their papers...

Write more, write the first thing that comes into your mind.

I was looking at them and was happy to see that some of them were smiling while writing (so, you are writing to your crush?), some were looking up to the ceiling conjuring up English words (me looking up at the ceiling and asking them what they see above) to translate what they wanted to say, some just gave up and started doodling on their paper after writing a few sentences.

So, finally after an hour, I told them to pass their papers.

I read their works (not checked or graded them) and was happy at the numbers of sentences  they have written, some even wrote multiple letters to many friends. I read some sample to the class, joked about who they were writing to. 

Did I grade their papers? Did I rank their outputs? Hell, no!

No, just told them it was all very good and they should enjoy writing whatever it is that comes into their heads no matter how incoherent and random the ideas.

When rules are imposed first, it distracts the writer and the creativity will be replaced by rigid conformity that would hamper their writing this early in their lives. 

Writing is learned by writing. Its similar to music, lots of people are lead to music theory because they can already sing or play music and musical terms are necessary to communicate, but very few, if any at all, were led to music by studying music theories first. So, encourage them to write, doodle first, unthinking of rules of grammar, accuracy of words, it could all start with one written word.

Interest is the best teacher.

The Early Crickets or why I've become a morning person

"Age is my alarm clock," the old man said. "Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have a longer day?

This is Old man Santiago talking to Manolin the little boy in Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." I guess age wakes you up when you're growing old.

When I was in my youth, just like everybody else, I used to sleep as if there's no tomorrow, as if I have all the time in the world. I had no sense of urgency at all and time was measured by fun, and fun accelerated time. So, I found out.

Now in my middle age, time revealed how precious time is. I guess when I realized that I have already spent half of my life, that is granting I lived to be ninety years old, there's this growing desire to slow things down. To take it easy because who knows, the ninety may turn out to be just be sixty, or fifty, no one ever knows and to spend that precious little time pursuing dreams and careers seems to me to be a waste of little time left.

I remember an OFW acquaintance who spent almost a third of his life working in the middle east ruing how mean life is. Now that he has the money to eat and enjoy the things he wants, and now that he has all the time in the world, he just couldn't anymore. He is old, hypertensive, diabetic, rheumatic, his body tired. Lucky are those who are born with silver spoons.

Slowing down time...

I wake up at four, usually. I take my coffee outside while it's still dark with Alden, our dog, half awake, looking at me. I guess the dog got used to the routine that it stopped barking at being disturbed. Coffee outside is even more enjoyable when it's raining. The sight of rainwater cascading from tree branches is so soothing that the desire to go back to bed is defeated by the joy of seeing refreshment. 

 To go to work before the sunrises is an experience that I have come to enjoy. The view outside my classroom windows are mostly corrugated tin roofs but farther there's a hill where I could see the sun rising. The light slowly entering the classroom is something to behold. Maybe age does that, sentimental something.

Hearing the crickets still singing and our janitor busy collecting trash. 

Watching the early morning news with the class early bird. And looking down from my classroom and watcing the pupils arrive to school first by ones, twos, then slowly building up to a crowd. The sight gives my mind the time to adjust to the building up noise, ruckus of pupils crowding to their classrooms.

Anyway, still have some stuff to do..."grades."

Classroom Research and EV the evil voice

I try to enjoy my weekend and in this case it's a three day weekend but at the back of my head there's this nagging and intrusive tiny voice that keeps whispering evil stuffs in my head, which, if I do not suppress ruins the short, short vacation. No, I'm not a schizophrenic, well, on self diagnosis at least, bipolar? I don't know, But I guess most, if not all, teachers experience the same kind of phenomenon.

Here's how the conversation usually progresses.  

Evil Voice  (which from now I would call EV): Have you updated your LIS.

Me: Oh my God, I promised to do it last week but I need to have a break! I promise I'll do it tomorrow. 

EV: There you go again making up excuses!

Me:   Don't I deserve a break, The stress of teaching is killing me.

EV: All jobs are stressful you dimwit. Here are other stuffs that you should not forget. DLL, Form 137, Form 8, Action Plan, Physical fitness report, grade level and school wide test result consolidation, 16 pieces of rating sheets, and remember classroom research, sf's. Don't forget the collectibles: pta collection, another pta collection, bsp, gsp, anti tb...drowning already? More will be coming! The God of Education is still not done with you sinners!

This conversation usually occurs at the end of the quarter. I guess the voice will never stop until the paper works are accomplished. 

Anyway, all these stuffs are routine except for classroom research which was added to our mountainous paper works about a year ago. I know the objective behind research is to discover classroom problems and how they can be solved in the classroom setting using the teacher/researcher's observations and the solutions that arise from the study, the scientific method thing.

Well, I'm not blaming or insulting any teacher. I guess with the amount of work teacher's do, the thinking would be to meet the research requirements with the minimal effort. The reason behind this theory is not because teachers are lazy or incompetent, its just research takes a backseat behind the classroom and school records keeping, it's prioritization.

I read some of the research titles done in the school and they are good but many are redundant and the topic is so obvious that research seemed superfluous. The thing is, there will come a time when teachers run out of problems or challenges to study, at least in the learner and the classroom setting. And since research is another requirement included in the RPMS, the teacher may end killing themselves racking up their brains to come up with titles. Also most teachers are trained to teach, to facilitate learning, to captain the classroom. research which requires another set of skills from writing to stats, is something most are not trained to do. Another is inclination, speaking for myself, I do not have the inclination to conduct research for reasons one being it's tedious and boring as hell. Of course, this is me, but I also get the impression from most teachers that research is one thine they do not enjoy doing. That's just my impression, the truth could very well be the opposite, they love doing research.

I have this very simple but not original idea about education and work. It's all about interest and motivation, the intrinsic and extrinsic thing. There should an equilibrium between the two. If the work is done on the motivation of promotion and demotion, the project will be accomplished but not enjoyed and expect shitty titles worthy of being used as a toilet paper. But if the motivation is done out of interest and the aim of helping out, expect quality research, expect rarity.

Thinking and conceptualizing requires a creative mind. Creative minds requires room for exploration of ideas. Think of a computer with a powerful processor and a large memory. But like anything and everything, cramped those memories with stuffs and the processor slows down. Another analogy is the stomach, eat small meals at the correct intervals and you get good poop but if you cram the stomach with stuffs edible and inedible, potable and not potable, it will produce...well...do the science. So goes with the mind.

What am I saying? Less is more. Why? Do the the Superior, minor and demi Gods' in the department read and evaluate the research? With the amount of research being submitted, do they really study them and apply the recommendations. Or the papers are  just stacked up in cabinets and storage to be used as mediums for molds and fungi culture. Less is more because it will be difficult to find a manuscript lost in the tons of scratch papers. One, two, or three well done research is better than... 

Former pupils and former teachers and memory problem

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I admit, it feels nice to be visited by my former pupils. It means a lot to be remembered.


I recall a few months back, I was riding on my way to work when a motorcycle appeared on my left side with a lanky teenager rider on it. The boy (or maybe the guy because its obvious he's already advanced into puberty) said "good morning sir." "Good morning, " I greeted back and he smiled at me and told me that his mother had just died and that he still could not believe his mother was gone. I was a little taken aback when he told me this because I did not really knew him that well. He was not even in my advisory class.


A lot was going on inside my head then. First, I was trying to recall his name! I knew his face, that's for sure because he's one of my difficult pupils, a teacher does not forget the face of a "pasaway" pupil, but I just couldn't remember him. I have a nasty memory and pupils especially girls used to play tricks on me by lining up in front of me covering their name tags and then asking me to name them none by one, which of course, was not only difficult but almost impossible. Second, I was also trying to figure out what year he graduated. His face is clear but the name, not even fuzzy, it's zero.


He kept on talking though most of his words were drowned out by the booming sound of his motorcycle's open exhaust pipe. I glanced at his face and I could feel his sadness. I said my condolences and told that everything will be ok. I inquired if he's still studying and I was relieved to hear that he was enrolled. I think the conversation lasted a minute or maybe even less, when he said goodbye and sped off.

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Anyway, when I arrived in my classroom and sat behind my table, I though about what happened and I also thought about my past teachers. I still remember my teachers from kindergarten to grade six. Most of my high schools teachers, sadly I have forgotten. There's Ms. Calderon, Mrs. Gonzaga, Mrs. Gatchalian, Mrs. Santiago, Mrs. Gozum, Mrs. De Jesus, and Mrs. Pinon, I still remember them.


Thinking about my former pupil, I guess the teacher - pupil relationship is still there. Maybe he thinks that I could still remember him the way he remembers me and judging from the way he spoke to me, maybe he felt he was still talking to his funny and crazy music teacher who likes to joke and made fun of his pupil's surnames. But from my perspective, it's a different thing, I am now speaking with a teenager on his way to adulthood and not a ten year old--a lot has changed.


And this is one of those things that frustrates me, my poor memory. Just yesterday, I was on my way to the bank to withdraw my salary when I heard my name being shouted. I stopped my motorcycle and there's this high school student running towards me with a wide smile on his face. "Sir George!" He shouted. He was one of my last year's pupils and I couldn't even remember his name! He talked as if we were in class the afternoon before. He asked for a ride which I gladly obliged and along the way we met some of his classmates and also my former pupils and I couldn't also remember most of their names.


Anyway...


I have come to realize that I am quite popular. Hundreds of children and many who are already on their way to adulthood knew me because I have taught them. No one pupil graduates from the school without passing through me because I taught the school hymns and other graduation songs, so even if they did not attend my classes, they learn the graduation ceremony songs from me.


So, riding in jeep, walking down a street, riding on my motorcycle, I get greetings, smiles, hellos, and if not greetings, at least I get that "I know you" look from some of people and I just smile back because chances are, they are my former pupils.

Needlephobia and alternate Earth story

Needles are also notorious because
they are used by mangkukulams
to inflict pain on their victims.

Sewing needles used to scare the hell out of me.

There's a story to it.

When I was still in pre-school, my mother hand sewed a lot of stuff. She patched holes on shirts, pants; repaired tears on pillow cases, curtains; nip the edges of our short pants to make it shorter, etc. She did a lot of hand sewing,  like, I guess, most housewives did.

I was the last of of the siblings then (Dadai was still on the way), so I was the one left with my mother at home. She was busy and so was I. She sewed, I sewed too. And of course, sharp objects and little children did not sit well and it usually resulted in pricks, blood and tears.

My mother told me that I should not play or even touch needles or pins. "Needles kills," she told me. Well, not as blunt as that but basically that was what she meant.

The thought of  needles
travelling through my body
unnoticed, scared me.

"Look at these sharp needles, feel the sharpness. Once you are pricked by it, and it entered your skin, it will travel through your veins carried by your blood stream up to your heart. Once it reached your heart, it will prick your heart and burst it killing you in the end." I mean, this scared me big time. My imagination was already running wild. I had this vision of a spear running through my veins seeking out my heart to stab and rip it apart, and the excruciating pain that goes with it...   

This fear was reinforced by the fact that many adults, like my lola Moning, had the same thing to say about needles. "Be careful with needles. You might seat on one and without noticing it, it might already be in your bloodstream going to your heart." So, from that moment on, I had this child's illogical (well, my mother's explanation and authority then made it logical for me) fear of needles. Of course,   the fear was gone when I'm already in grade school. 

I guess adult minds work that way. I mean, I do that now too. I scare children with traditional and sometimes made up stories instead of explaining things scientifically to them which they may not understand or learn from. Or they may understand but it may not affect their emotions the way stories do. Children's imaginations are more powerful than their intellects. Hold their imagination and you have a hold on them.

Stories (or myths) are not lies for they are not meant to deceive but they are also not truths the way scientific laws and logical truths are either true or false. Stories are responses to situations that invites a particular response from the hearer. 

Multiverse or alternate universe is a hypothesis
that there exist an infinite number of alternate
universes.There is also an infinite number of earths
 which is similar to ours but with slight
variations or could be so different from ours
that the laws of physics may be opposite of ours.
There are earths where there is no life because
 the evolutionary process did not grant it
the condition to spawn life.
 It is Darwin's evolution
on a cosmological scale.

How about an alternate story? (In a slightly different alternate Earth (Earth 2) where my mother was a doctor of medicine and I was a pre-school tot)

My mother(2): " George, don't play with needles. They are not sterilized. They may have the bacterium Clostridium Tetani. Once the bacterium entered your bloodstream, they will multiply and attack your central nervous system. The process may take a few days but the symptoms are mild spasms in the jaw muscles—also known as lockjaw or trismus. The spasms can also affect the chest, neck, back, abdominal muscles, and buttocks. Back muscle spasms often cause arching, called opisthotonos. Sometimes the spasms affect muscles that help with breathing, which can lead to breathing problems...*"

Me(2): (Playing with needles and pins)"Who cares...I can't understand a word you're saying mother. Tell me the story about needles that George's mother from Earth 1 told him. Please..."

Me(2): Oouuucchhhh...what the Fraggernestein!

  * (wikipedia)

Ran out of fuel

I was on my home for lunch last Friday when my motorcycle conked out. I kick started it, then I heard the engine start and then choked again. I kick started it again and it ran for about a few meters before finally stopping,  for good. I was lucky because I made it a few meters to the Shell station. I pushed the motorcycle  to the pump and then I asked the attendant to fill a hundred pesos worth of unleaded gasoline (which was about a glass of fuel).

An old photo.

I was getting my wallet out of my pocket when the realized that I forgot my wallet; it was still on the table in the house, a few kilometers away. I looked at the gas attendant, gave my riding jacket and told him that I forgot my wallet; I had no money to pay him. I left him my jacket as a security and told him I would be coming back for it. I did not gave him any time to reply; I kick started the motorcycle and rode out of the gas station. After having my lunch at home, I passed by the gas station to pay the gas and then I picked my riding jacket. The attendant smiled and said thanks.

Well, what could I say but welcome.

This was the first time it happened to me, but I think this was the fourth or fifth time my motorcycle ran dry of fuel. Gas is just too expensive.

TV Controls

 I was having fun with my camera when a kid form our church borrowed and tried to look at the pictures by touching the screen; he thought that my camera was a touch screen camera but it was not. Anyway, got me thinking and got me nostalgic about controls especially TV control which I think was the paradigms for designing control interface for devices...or whatever.

I spent my childhood with dial controls. We used to have a vacuum tube cabinet type Zenith television and all the controls used dials.  To change channels, a dial was turned.  The on/off control was also dial, and so was the vertical and horizontal controls; everything was controlled by turning knobs and switches.

Not our TV. I remember the horizontal and the vertical and horizontal control was located at the back panel.  In retrospect, the sound these old tvs made when turned on and turned off was horrifying by today's standards.Also, the static created by the crt was so powerful that they could literally make the viewers, when near enough, hair stand on its end.

When I was small, I used tot think that any house that had a telephone was owned by a very rich resident.  I think I may have used this kind of telephone maybe three to four times because it was a sort of a technological novelty especially for a child like me.

Then after a few years, the push buttons came. Everything then was push button. In fact, when our neighbor’s new TV arrived, we were there to witness how this push button control thing worked. It was quite a change because the TV controls had no dials. There were buttons for each channel, which during those years, numbered around four or five TV stations. Also the antenna was indoor and that meant no climbing up on the roof to rotate the aerial to look for better reception. 

No dials, just buttons. A church member had one of this. We used to watch betamax tapes on this TV. No more fine tuning dials...

Of course the next stage was the remote control. ( Then there was the rotary something called the click-wheel made famous by the  Apple IPods for the personal devices.) 

And then it was the touch screen but now some TV are responding to gestures...

I mean, even Spock didn't anticipate this. Hmmm...what's next?

School, Mango

Panoramic shot of our school. On the left is the big mango tree. It must be around fifty years old.

I went to school yesterday. I met the principal and she humored me about the visit by asking if I still recognize her. Of course, I knew she was humoring with a little touch of sarcasm in there because she told the teachers that we should report to work because technically summer is not vacation, which, for a person as thick as me would not work. I smiled and replied: "Yes ma'am, you're the principal." I was with her for a few seconds, chat a little here and then. She was pointing to some improvements being done at the school. She was busy, as always.  

I then went upstairs in the classroom to find that a teacher from grade three has moved up to grade six. I don't know what it is about moving to higher grades as if there's this some sort of prestige or promotion or something.  Of course, teaching grade six requires a broader stock of knowledge because these pupils do ask some question that sometimes goes beyond the PELC*. So, there must be a little truth that grade six pupils must have a little more to it especially when grade six pupils undergo batteries of tests before graduation but the the pay is still the same. Anyway... This is similar to thinking that a teacher moving up to a higher section is sometime interpreted as a promotion of a sort. maybe, maybe not, coconut.

Anyway...I expect a rather interesting school becuase two master teachers were assigned the two lowest section in grade six. The move raised some eyebrows because many, well, seniority: the more senior the better hmmm....situation, I mean the station.

I was on my motorcycle, about to go home, when I heard a loud thump. I looked and saw a mango that fell from the tree. The janitor picked it up and gave it to me. I said thanks and put it under the motorcyle's U-box and forgot all about. So, when I opened the U box to get something, voila: the mango was all black.

Hot summer days and Those Young Girls

Summer is already here. The heat is already oppressive but the occasional gusts of wind provide relief. I can’t help but be nostalgic about summer vacation.

Every time summer comes, whenever my friends and I meet together, we have an unforgettable story that we always talk and laugh about.  This may sound embarrassing but since it happened a long time ago, and is now just one of those experiences from our youth that we reminisce with fun and a little embarrassment, I can tell about it without fear of hmmm…judgment.

We were 17 years old then. It was summer. My five friends and I had nothing to do, so we decided to watch a movie on my best friend’s Betamax. Our hormones were still pumping too much libido in us, so we decided to watch a dirty movie by Traci Lords called “Those Young Girls.”

We went to MRJ Taytay and rented the movie to the chagrin of the cute, young lady storekeeper. It’s Good Friday and we were renting a porno movie! Though we felt a little embarrassed, and she looked a little concerned, maybe, about her duty as a Catholic to observe the solemnity and holiness of lent, but still business is business; she gave us the tape.

My best friend and I were Baptists, we knew that it was a major, major sin to watch dirty movie. Though we were afraid of divine wrath, we were more concerned about being caught by my friend's older brother. So, we posted someone by the veranda to act as a look out to warn us if someone came home unexpectedly. We didn't want to be caught watching porno, it would be big trouble for all of us.

We were glued on the hot scene on the TV screen when we heard footsteps. We were surprised because our look out was also glued on the TV that he didn’t notice someone was climbing up the stairs. The unforgettable part was how we managed to eject the tape, threw the tape under the sofa, turned off the TV and pretended that we, the six of us,  were just having a wonderful time talking about nothing. Of course, our silence, the sweaty and the flushed look gave us away easily.  The first thing that my friend’s brother did was to look under the sofa…we scrambled for our lives.

The tape was confiscated and according to my friend…hmmm...His brother also watched the tape. (Of course, I  don't know for sure.)

Circumcision

Summer is circumcision season in the Philippines. Boys talk in hushed silence of when they will be circumcised--the right of passage to manhood. There will be a lot of skirt wearing boys this summer and lots of tomatoes too. Ha, the stories, the stories.

My cousins and I were circumcised in a sterile clinic, anesthetized and without any suspense except for the anesthesia injection that scared the excrement out of me—no stories to tell. Numb! Pffftttttt. Anyway, at least I got a primer on how impotence is like.

I envy my friends who had their circumcision done the  traditional Filipino way. Their will power and courage to go through it without anesthetics and without proper hygiene awed me.   Imagine the risks traditional circumcision brings. The tweet-tweet is not washed with soap. Instead of a surgeon, the operation is performed by a barber (or anyone who knows the traditional way of circumcising).The barber does not even sterilize his shave; he wipes it with a rug operation after operation. It is amazing that many do not die of tetanus because there’s no antiseptic just chewed guava leaves and saliva.

Anyway, according to my friends this is how it is done:  First, the patient spends half an hour bathing in a river or a carabao pool to soften the foreskin. While bathing, he chews guava leaves. Then the barber checks if the foreskin is already loose from the tweet tweet. This is done by pulling the foreskin all the way down to tweet tweet’s base. If the foreskin goes down all the way, then it is is ready for the operation. But if the foreskin is not loose enough, it is forced that it sometimes bleeds.

After checking the looseness of the foreskin, the patient inserts the tapered end of an L shaped guava branch  between the foreskin and the tweetie bird inside the foreskin (I don't know if I'm making sense here.). When guava branch is inserted, the barber asks the patient to look up so that the patient would not see the blade and the blood. The barber taps the foreskin with his finger to numb the skin. Sometimes a patient screams thinking that the skin is already being cut. Others swallow the guava leaves because they are startled. Others simply lost consciousness, while others just grab their pants and run like Andres Bonifacio being chased by the Spanish guardia civils.

When the tapping  is done, the  barber lays the blade of the shave on the foreskin and  taps it with a piece of wood cutting and splitting the foreskin. The foreskin is set apart (or split) exposing the bald tweet tweet. . Then the patient spits the chewed guava leaves, the antiseptic, on the wound. Finally, the cute little birdie is bandaged with a piece of cloth, traditionally called “baru-baruan” (baby clothes). The wound is to be washed with boiled guava leaves and to avoid inflammation, the birdie should not be seen by a female.
  

Those who lost  consciousness and those who ran away will be branded as cowards.  They will be made fun of during drinking sessions, during funeral wakes when funny stories are needed to waken the mourners, and every summer when it is the season for ciscumcision—their stories will be told long after their dead.

What's German for circumcission? It's Slizenhutten.