Deconstruction

Every year there’s people building drainage, every year and the most mind boggling thing is they do this during the rainy season, they do all the diggings during the rainy season when school’s on and the rain is on. Where are the tomatoes of these government people?

Why don’t they just build one giant drainage system under the road and save money and traffic with all these seasonal diggings?

Why don’t they lay the pipes before paving and concreting the road?

Our roads are like a motocross track. There are humps. There are big holes because when the road was repaved, the engineers didn’t cover the hatches of the utility companies underground lines, so what you have are dangerous crater like depression that can throw unknowing motorcycle riders to their deaths, or destroy a car’s suspension system.

Our electrical posts looked like black spaghettis because of the amount of wires in them.

My friend said that it is in inefficiency that government people get rich. Imagine if there will be no diggings, no maintenance, and no calamities where would our Satanist politicians get their kickbacks? (Not all of our politicians are Satanist, some are comedians, some are athletes foot, some are dancers, there are also atheists and some are good Christians.)

Tango in D

This is my "reinterpretation of Isaac Albeniz' Tango in D. I love the melody becuase it reminds me of our very own"kundimans." If you listen very carefully you can hear in the background my audience cheering--"the frogs and the crickets.

Jose Rizal and me

The study of the life of Dr. Jose Rizal, RP’s National Hero, is a required course in college. I’m in my senior year now and whether I like it or not, I have to take the subject. It’s a good thing that our instructor has a more appropriate approach on the subject, she meets us only once a week for discussion and evaluation; the other days was spent on reading and writing essays about Rizal’s life. A far better approach than torturing students with reports on the life of Rizal (a very boring subject) without anybody listening, might as well evaporate the student to smithereens. Of course this approach is more difficult for the instructors since it is they who will read all the essays and grade them.

Anyway, I am elected by my classmates to write the script for Rizal the play, our final requirement. The prelim is almost over and I still can’t think of when and where to start.

Funny thing is I learn to read by reading Rizal’s childhood biography “Nung Bata pa si Rizal”. This is through the coaching of my eldest sister. All my life I thought reading was inborn because when I entered school I can already read. According to my eldest sister, I learn to read at the age of three (or four). A testament, not of my reading ability, but of my sister’s teaching ability. My eldest sister is now a principal of a small Baptist elementary school in Alaminos, Pangasinan,

I wished I saved the book lots of memories in there.

Champurado Overdose

Last night it rained heavily and our tin roof, as always, leaks, so like most Filipinos, what I did was put pots and pans under these leaks to catch the rainwater. I don’t know, I had the roof “bandaged” but somehow rainwater has this ability to create holes in our roof.

I fetched my wife from work and on our way home, I was thinking of food, comfort food to cure that feeling of dampness and sluggishness that the rain brings. Rain plus champurado (rice cooked in chocolate) plus tuyo (dried fish) or dilis (dried anchovy) equals heaven. So I bought half a kilo of sticky rice, 15 pieces of dried fish, and sugar and chocolate and cooked champurado.

The problem was, because of the sticky rice, when the champurado cooled, it became so sticky that I’m thinking of putting the left over champurado in a baking pan, sprinkling some dried anchovy on top, I would then go around the neighborhood shouting, “Bibingka especial! Bibingka especial! Chocolate flavored, topped with dried anchovy!”

Naahhhhh…my neighbors knew better; they’ll know immediately that I’m selling brownies.

Sunday Schools and those strange feelings

My first PowerPoint presentation about Sunday School went well, I think. Last Sunday, I concluded the series on Sunday school and in the next sessions we maybe proceeding to other areas of Sunday school work that needs attention, like teaching and counseling. I pray that this will be a consistent activity. Maybe next time we will be having other resource person from the group. It’s a strange feeling lecturing people who are more able than me.

My first men’s Sunday school class, I think, also went well. The class asked me to discuss doctrinal stuffs so I started the Bible doctrinal lesson series with the study on revelation. I discussed general revelation and special revelation etc. I am apprehensive because theology uses technical language and the members of my class are from diverse profession and with different educational level, so the difficulty is the language. Anyway, I thought they would sleep on me while I droned on with the lecture but the discussion and the sharing went well.

Teaching these things is dangerous, I believe. The danger is that I may turn these people into theologs…he, he, he…

Anyways, the class is composed of more mature and stronger Christians than I am. So, but, hmmmm…but I still have…I don’t know…I enjoy theology and a little philosophy and I also enjoy teaching them but…hmmmmm…dangerous.

Pray, reflect, meditate and be careful and be very sensitive to the leadings of the H.S….

It’s a strange feeling teaching things about things I once hated. Strange.

Next lesson: The scriptures. I think they will like this topic.

Rated G?

http://mingle2.com/blog-rating

I am surprised that this blog that talks about nothing got a rated G while M and TH got a rated R something must be wrong with the rating system.

F4 and those Never Ending Meteor Garden Reruns and Why I sometimes Contemplate Committing Suicide by Bashing my Head with the TV

I don’t know if this is real. I don’t know if this is the work of some genius malignant, insidious super political villains bent on turning all the Filipinos into a walking, drooling Pavlov’s dog like creature mesmerized into thinking that their existence depends on the ringing of bells and TV reruns, salivating, howling, barking asking for more and more, conditioned to respond to stimuli, conditioning my countrymen and women to vote for political reruns the likes of politicians who always got re-elected despite the fact that these politicians looked like mad scientists bent on destroying the environment and the Filipinos…tra..la…la…la…blah…blah…blah…

Wake up my countrymen and women! Wake up! The prophecies are coming true. The science of subliminal suggestion is now at the level that can only be imagined by science-fiction writers a few years back. These prophets, science fiction writers, have seen things before they happen. They are gifted by with a foresight that only caffeine and lack of sleep can provide. Jules Verne, the father of science fiction, has prophesied travels underwater and on the moon and now we have underwater stations and space stations. H.G. Wells has written about food of the Gods and now we have Promils, food for the gifted child. How about D.F, Jones and his colossus computer, now we have the internet? The late Isaac Asimov, in his Foundation Trilogy, has written about a prophet, a savior who once in a while pops up in a computer screen (hologram) in times of crisis to guide humanity on the challenges and problems that they will be facing and heavens…(sign of the cross)…could this man be Bill Gates?

I read a sci-fi short story a couple of years ago; I forgot who the writer was, but the story was about TV. It’s an old sci-fi story, times when TV was not that influential. The character in the story came back from the mountains and upon his return he was surprised to find the destruction, the corruption and the deterioration in the environment and the people—bleak world. When he entered a bar he found the people happy in a dazed like manner looking at a giant TV screen. He went outside and looked at the people; they were oblivious to their condition. Then he looked at the TV, looked at the people, shook his head and went back to the mountains. (This is how I remember the story.)

This is happening now. I have the feeling that some powerful Filipino mad scientist and malignous politician is trying to liquefy the minds of the Filipinos. I haven’t done any serious TV watching for long time and one morning, I heard from the TV that there will be another re-run of Meteor Garden. This means that I will be hearing those alien songs again! (Waccchingchong cha hay dimmm) My daughter was two years old when this chinovela was first aired on Philippine TV and then there were many reruns, and now there is another rerun in another channel. Some evil mind is behind this. The youth will once again be numbed to the happenings around their community and their country because most of them will spend their time fantasizing about love and romance and looking at the sky trying to find meteors.

This is not an isolated case. Reruns abound in Philippine TV. A Rosy Life, All About Eve, Marimar (an adaptation), Betty la Fea, Full House etc.

Wake up my countrymen and women, wake up.

(Dosemuh wahay wa waching….) In the name of Odin and all the fatalist gods of Valhalla there’s that song again!.....Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

This kind of TV programming is in preparation for the coming election. Haven’t my countrymen and women noticed this?

My gulay and vegetable please see the pattern!

I’m afraid that the time will come when the people in prisons, in mental asylums, the rebels in the mountains, people isolated from TV will be the only sane people left sane in the country--people who we all think are evil and insane.

Morning sickness and history

I was woken rudely by my daughter asking me to bring her to school. I hate mornings; mornings make me sick; I feel nauseated, and hazed as if I had taken ten tablets of Benadryl AH. Anyway, I’m trying not to go back to our papag (cot). I have nothing to talk about in this blog because I’m a little busy, hmmmm…not really that busy but the anxiety of school zapped the typing energy out of me. I haven’t read any good books; in fact I haven’t read anything except a few glances at Jose Rizal’s, the Philippines’ national hero, biography. I am not a Rizal guy; I am a Bonifacio guy. Bonifacio is the founder of the Katipunero, the revolutionary movement that fought the Spaniard and was later executed by his fellow revolutionaries. He is my national hero. The problem is that Filipinos think that having a genius national hero like Rizal will make them a genius. (No, I’m being mean again!) There will always be controversy surrounding Rizal’s selection as the country’s national hero because in the first place the guy was really not a revolutionary he is more of an assimilationist (I don’t know if that’s the right word). He wants equality with Spain and not independence.

Anyway, I can’t do anything about it except accept the fact that even in selecting national heroes the Filipinos like branded goods. Rizal was a genius, surgeon, writer, magician, humorist, philosopher etc. –reminds me of Lex Luthor.

I like my heroes to be simple guys, like Bonifacio, a warehouseman during the day and a brave revolutionary organizer and soldier at night, like Superman.

(Must be that darned pirated CD of the movie Superman Returns.)

Anyways, Teodoro Agoncillo (The historian who is pro-Bonifacio. Just look at the cover of his book”The History of the Filipino People” and you’ll know what I mean) is a better writer of history than Gregorio Zaide (Rizal’s biographer).

I Hope I will not be sued.

Mere half

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

(Why am I attracted to the bleak writings of these existentialists?)

Thoughts on Doctrines

Somewhere in the back of head, there’s this feeling of uneasiness, of hmmm…like I was scratching a galvanized corrugated iron sheet with my finger nails, (the Filipino word is “ngilo” I don’t know the English translation) whenever bible doctrines is discussed. It’s not that I hate Bible doctrines, it’s just that sometimes, just sometimes, okay, always, I have the feeling that people who thinks they know the Bible (like that preacher from channel 37 who claims the his doctrines is original) also knew God, also grasped God, can also manipulate God, can explain God. Of course I will also be teaching doctrines, that is if our pastors will trust me that what I will teach is what I believe in and not what I explore and asks, so, I will be...hmmm…uneasy about myself too.

If we encounter first century Christians, I think we will condemn them as not Christian because of the simplicity of their faith, of their doctrines (or the lack of it). And if we encounter first century Christians, they will call us Pharisees admit it or not, our dogmatism will be so rigid, legalistic and anti-Christ, and our churches so organizational to them that they will not recognize us as Christians at all. And they are nearer to the historical Christ and his teachings than we could ever be.

They don’t even have Bibles and yet they were able survive even before the earliest attempt to create a cannon of the Bible by an, of all the people, heretic named Marcion during the second century began. What they have really is not a bible at all but loose letters and manuscripts with questionable claims of authorship. We are blessed to have the Bible; then again, are we?

I love the Bible. I read it. I study it. I learn from it. I believe it is the word of God. I believe that it is divine. I believe that it’s inerrant in its original autograph. I believe in its revelatory power. I believe everything in it and I’m willing to accept its literalness in the name of orthodoxy.

But I also believe that God is greater than any book, even the Bible. The Bible reveals what God thinks about God that God thinks we are capable of processing, and even in a simplified revelation as a book, Christians can’t even agree on simple terms like “disciples” and “followers.” How much more about…the nature of God.

The Bible is not God. The Bible does not contain God. The Bible is not an operating manual of God. Unless these things are understood, bibliolatry (worship of the Bible) perils faith.

The Bible should lead and guide us to God but if it becomes a stumbling block, a whirlpool of inane and insane wordplay and games of logic and etymologies and what have you…it’s time to be a Quaker. Nahhh…just having fun.

(Quakers are pacifist, philanthropists and good Christians. Pennsylvania was named after their leader William Penn. They are famous for their religious piety and independence. They believed that divine revelation is immediate and individual. The Bible is secondary source of revelation for them.)

Don't Cry Joni and Songs and names

(This is a good song.)

What is it about songs?

“Maybe it’s wrong to say you love me too cause I know you never do. Somebody else is waiting for you…”

This song was originally done by the Neocolours (remember Jamie Rivera and Jimmy Antiporda, Neocolours’ chief songwriter, and how they parted ways because of Jamie’s obsession to be the next Leah Salongga of the Philippines). That song was later revived by Side A. Believe it or not during my freshman year one of my classmates, Benito from auto technology, wrote the whole lyrics of that song and passed it off as an essay piece for our English one class. I was laughing when I read it, but after the semester, when our graded class cards were returned, to my chagrin and joy, I saw that he had a better grade than me. So whenever I hear that song, I remember dear old Benito. He graduated two years ago and I sometime see him in Taytay, Rizal. Last I saw him is he’s planning to add education units to his degree so that he can teach.

“Well, I don’t know how I knew it. But I knew it somehow. You’re the answer to the questions, no one answered till now. I don’t know what you see, or what you see in me. There could never be what you are to me…..Starts that glisten, lips for kissin’. Honey listen its true…”

The title of that song is “Simply Jesse” by Rex Smith. I love that song and I told myself that I will name my child after it. After a few years I got a daughter named Jesse Faith. Jesse is from that song and Faith was the name given by my wife. So whenever I hear that song I would tell my daughter, “Hey, that’s where you got your name.” I don’t know if when she grew up she’ll still appreciate the connection with that song.

I knew a bass player named Joni and whenever we asked him where he got his name he’ll be quiet. But then one of his friends would sing,

“Joni, Joni don’t you cry. I’ll….by and by….” Then they would all laugh. He nodded. “Yes, that’s where I got my name.”

I am thinking what if my daughter is already a teenager and some of her friends asked her where she got her name and then someone would sing,

“Stars that glisten lips for kissin….”

Don’t ever, ever name your children after a song. Tsk, tsk, tsk…anyway I can always say that I named her after my neighbor.

Me, I was named after the doctor who commandeered me out of my mother’s womb.