Virtually skip roped 900 times this morning.  Blended myself a cup of cappucino and ate bananas for breakfast.  Mom packed me korean beef with bean sprouts on the side for lunch.  Finished my first semester lesssons and conducted the semestral evaluation survey.  Underwent the earthquake drill, went back to class and proceeded with the rest of the lecture for class two.  Spent time with my INTACT students, was finally acquainted with Patrick Echevarria (behold the Valedictorian and a future JVP or maybe a jesuit!) and was super impressed by the efficiency of Queenie, my INTACT teaching assistant.  Another fun class with my 330, then the much anticipated meeting with my beloved JTAs...

     It's like seeing my grown-up babies again.  Oh how I missed them.  They were with me when I was on the brink of implosion.  Class with them was more than lectures and grades.  It was a sharing of hearts--they gave feeling to an otherwise head-level field.  I was a tao in their class.  And looking back, more than me helping them and teaching them philosophy, it was I who learned.

     They are graduating [and therefore, leaving again (this time for good!)] in a few months.  And like a parent to a child, I'm a little scared that the sadistic tragedies of life may wound them again just as they were wounded when some of them were discriminated against by vendors in Singapore, by pseudo-tourist guides at the Great Wall, by bouncers in France, by their teachers in their respective universities because they were asians.  Some might suffer existential discomfort and pain again just as dignity was beaten out of them in their search for a fabulous project for their SOMBA or when the championship crown was almost within reach but hopped, skipped, and landed on the opponent's court, or when they are treated like robot-typewriters by their new philosophy teachers as they are robbed of their philosophical imagination yet again.  But then, that is for them to plough through--these JTAs are toughies, I have no doubt they can overcome whatever there is to overcome.  They, more than being their batch's cream of the crop, are burning with ideals and passion--if there'd be no way, they'll make one for themselves and I'm sure it'd be one superhighway of dreams coming into fruition.

Had to rush to a meeting immediately after the nostalgic reunion pictorial with my JTA-A (SY 2005-2006).  We threshed out plans for the department's 40th anniversary.  Deadlines were set, we're now rolling.

630, invited some friends to have dinner with me.  Was craving for Shanghai Bistro's beef tenderloin steak chinese style but didn't find anyone to tag along--everyone's busy cramming their work.  Was about to drive home and just check papers instead but then I realized there's no way other people or the lack thereof, can stop me from doing the things I want.  And so, I drove to Eastwood, parked my Blackie, clutched around 30 papers on my side and headed to SB.  I ordered my tenderloin steak and siao lung pao and corn soup with crab stick and rice and... [the manager who waited on me said, "Sir, I think this is enough!"] ...and enjoyed that quiet moment, savoring the tender meat, delighted by insightful papers I was checking... all by myself!

I'm back.  This is the Jope I know.  This is the Jope I want.  This is the Jope I am.  I never thought I'd find this Jope again.

Cathy called in two papers before I was set to leave.  She envied me feasting on the mouth-watering tenderloin steak in SB.  Reinforced by hunger, she asked that I wait for her.  And I chose to wait for her!  I chose to share with her the Jope I regained, the Jope that I am.

And on rice and tenderloin steak, we chatted about our permanency [contracts] both at work and in our lives.

Plugged into: Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back

"Sir, I was in a meeting with (name of professor deleted) and he asked me who my philo teacher is.  I said, 'Mr. Guevara and Miss Azada.'  His comment puzzled me. He said, 'Ah, Miss Azada is a good teacher!'  (pause) Sir, why did he say that?"

*sigh*

I just had to run and get my camera seeing this poor kitty crawl her way to safety.

 

 

I thought of helping the cat free its head off the empty bag of chips.  But fear hit me--the cat couldn't and simply wouldn't understand what I was about (supposed) to do to her.  I decided to just trust the cat's instinct and leave her on her own.

This must be what maturity is about--one knows when not to poke his finger on things he has no business meddling with and on things he knows not how to handle.  But then again, this might also also be a bad case of a lack of concern from someone who has the sensitivity to feel even for stray cats--of letting things be even if there is a strong discomfort rustling within.

Charles DuBois says:

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

The Cheshire cat asks, "have you totally lost your idealism to the mediocrity they dub as 'maturity'?"

Currently reading: Harry Potter: The Order of Phoenix

It's a rich girl-poor boy type scene.  Crazy, it happened to me once and before I even set sail in pursuing her, I was warned by my mom to stick to my own kind.  Momma's boy that I am, I whined and complained a little, but obeyed her still.  Back then, I didn't understand how because of economic status, a relationship cannot be forged.

I spent my formative years in my lolo's.  Because his house, our house then, was situated a stone throw away from the town market, my friends were the sons and daughters of asin and other gulay vendors.  I, together with my cousins, invite them to come over to our place to play and watch TV (which they don't have) and mess up our rooms and jump on our beds with muddied feet.  Germs, bacteria, and dirt were no issue to me then.  Lice and the odor of sun-drenched bodies did not matter.  Possibility of theft did not occur to me.  What's important is that we were having fun in my lolo's big house.  Friendship is living in neverland--all human categories are shed and everyone wears only his bare essentials--the quest for shared happiness.

It was probably because of this that I didn't have problems relating with the poor in my seminary days and during my JVP year.  In fact, I can say, I am very much at home with the underprivileged than with my own kind and those  above me in status.  This is not to say though that I spite the rich.  Part of my philosophy is to transcend labels and societal dicta.  I believe that at the very core of social groups is always a person with the same basic needs as others--persons who fart, who smell, who experience a bad hair day from time to time, who desires to be accepted and loved.

Or so I thought.

There are a lot of inconsistencies, incoherences, and  irrationalities in life that things you held on to once, things which propelled you to action, things which made you hope and dream are reversed and negated.  Just like my idea that people of different social status can be in no man's land where they can just be themselves stripped off of any put-ons capitalism and/or communist ideology has painted on their faces.

A rich man in trouble can never be helped by someone below his income level.  The helper can never fully comprehend the depth or shallowness of the helpee's problem.  When the rich man talks about losses in millions of pesos (and dollars even!), the poor helper cannot understand the seeming preoccupation with millions of pesos when week after week after week, the rich friend wastefully spends 20-50 thousand pesos for  wine and pulutan.  I know of the fallacy in my argument.  Hard earned money is hard earned money and losses are losses. How much you spend for capriciousness is beside the point.

The problem lies on how two persons of different economic backgrounds can meet.  Friendship is forged not by money, yet however astute and genuine the intentions for friendship may be, a rich man can only be fully accompanied by someone who can level up with him in terms of money.  A poor drinking buddy is no match and is way below the level of satisfaction and consolation a person who can gift the rich depressed friend with a plasma TV or a new SUV or a house alongside with a few words of wisdom here and there.    The poor friend can only offer his kind words--no fuss, no frills, hence not much impact.  Although relationships should not be based on how friends or partners can fulfill the others spiritual or mundane needs, the fulfillment of needs (especially the tangible ones) still plays a major role in the longevity of a relationship.  Friendship which ideally is free of economics and politics is in reality never exempt from the blinding power of money and power.

My gay hairstylist was giving me his/her litany of woes about his/her problems with his/her boyfriend.  He/she asks why gays cannot have a relationship like normal couples have--why when we speak of gay relationships, it is most often only about the money the benevolent gay hankering for love and affection from a straight guy can give.  Take away the money and love is lost, he/she said.  Sad but true.

A "tunay na kaibigan" is someone who will not only stick it out with you in mind and in spirit but also someone who can give you something money can buy because after all, we are embodied subjects, we must see in the concrete the friendship we profess.  A "tunay na kaibigan" can level with you when you talk about buying a block in Forbes or donning a new pair of Ferragamo's.

So what happens to the offer of friendship made by those who don't have the material bounty similar to the rich friend's?  Will company and loyalty suffice?  Will they be spared of the shame of not being able to be on the same page with the rich friend?  Will they be excused from not understanding and from sinking in their seats once talk about millions and new houses and new gadgets and new couture and travel plans are brought up at the table?  When natural and common discussions on sembreak or Christmas vacation plans are in the ambit of a European cruise or a world tour, will they not die in self-pity for they can never share the different level of happiness such travels and tours can add to the individual and to their friendship?

I understand what my mom warned me about in wanting to enter an economically imbalanced relationship.  Socio-economic elements will soon catch up and differences in worlds will inevitably be magnified.  Then you ask what your friendship is based on and there lies the other half of the problem--the explicitation of what is meant to be implicit and fluid in the first place.  Friendship is strained and later, lost.  It's just a matter of time, they say, so run while you're free.

What is friendship?  What is brotherhood?  What is a relationship?  I thought I knew what they are and how they work since I've been teaching this for six semesters now.  The philosopher Scheler is right: ultimately, its essence  cannot be defined but only exhibited. --I guess I have to stick it out with my "newfound" friends until my motivations for friendship is purified, until my concept of friendship is clarified.  Friendship can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed, Newton must have quipped.  We take a gamble in bridging the gap between the great social divide.  Win some, lose some.  That's just the way it is.

Almost every year since I graduated I've been in and out of Cebu for work and leisure.  Thinking I've exhausted what the province has to offer, I dilly-dallied packing till the last minute and strenuously psyched myself up for the trip.

Memories of Cebu flashed back and existential questions hit me the minute I stepped on Cebu land.  Part of the deal was confronting myself with what I really wanted to be in the next two or three years of my too-long-a-tarry-in-the-adolescence-stage-life--a question I've evaded for years now.  (FTV and Bigfoot are the two quick thoughts I entertained which somehow pacified my discontent yet excited the wits of me.)

But upon entering the Shangri-la Mactan complex, crazy thoughts in my constipated mind were slowly purged by the breath-taking sight of the view of the cerulian bay and the vastness of the resort itself.   It was indeed a shangri-la -- heaven-on-earth, the hidden paradise.  (The lack of pictures is a proof of the surfacing of ADHD which attacked me upon checking in.)

Yet the resort was merely a canvas to sew in a rich tapestry of fun  nouveu awakenings with Cathy.  We got to be friends and lovers and playmates and partners again in each other's arms -- love and romance rekindled and commitment which is soon to be professed in public was revalidated.

Cebu will be Shangri-la Mactan for me; and Shangri-la Mactan will be a shangri-la with Cathy.

It's not the three thousand pesos I lost which saddened me, it's the tarnishing of my belief in the good nature of people that ultimately ended my romantic suite with Divisoria--Tabora street to be exact.  Two ladies were hurrying behind me and a filthy guy in sando went ahead of me walking very slowly and stopping occasionally perhaps to stall for time while his conspirators unbutton my side pocket for my wallet.  Yes, I saved money from the last payday for naught.  I withdrew cash from the ATM that Saturday only to be followed and robbed by my kapwa-tao.

Cathy was there to the rescue.  She stayed by my side the whole time waiting for me to absorb everything.  A few hours later, we were styling our hairs with colored waxes prepping ourselves for her 7 year old cousin's birthday.  She told her tita about the pick-pocketing incident who by the sheer thought, sympathetically gave me a ninoy to ward off bad luck.  Without a driver's license, she drove me home and stayed with me till I was ready to sleep.  The next morning, she picked me up and treated me to a breakfast in some diner at the Mall of Asia.  She had poached corned beef and silver dollar pancakes and I, two eggs, hash browns, and sausages over never-empty cups of brewed coffee.

We went to the pre-wedding video shoot of my bestfriend after.  We were there too early and so Cathy and I strolled along the streets of Cinco Hermanos bashing houses and talking about our own dream house.  After the shoot, we went to Cathy's place to have lunch.  Everyone there was offering me their own sympathetic gestures after  hearing about the loss of my wallet.  One of her titas approached her and handed her what later I found to be another ninoy.  Struck by the generosity of everyone although still devastated by the bursting of my bubble of trust, I slowly saw the rehabilitation of the social person in me.

Cathy drove me home after lunch.  We were too sleepy having to rise for an early morning hello-and-goodbye-date with her friend El; we didn't resist my bed beckoning us for a nap.  An hour later, we shared hotdogs and an extra big pancit canton for merienda to energize us for our regular Sunday grocery.  An hour and a half of doing the rounds in the Shopwise aisles and partaking of all the free food tastes, we headed to The Spa for an oriental foot massage.   It was a real treat.  I pampered myself relaxing, refreshing, forgetting about the whole Divisoria incident.  To the second floor I went for the foot therapy after literally letting off steam at the sauna and jacuzzi pools and an hour later, I'm back with Cathy at the reception area.  The foot therapy was nowhere near our expectations but the timing was well worth it, it was Cathy's idea--she knew I needed that foot rub more than she did even if she wasn't feeling all that well too.

Without anymore money, we bought two pieces of porkcharaps in Andok's and ate it at their place with two bowls of instant Campbell's corn soup.  Cathy wanted a cream of mushroom soup but passed up on it and opted for corn instead since that was what I wanted.  She served me food and made me eat ahead knowing I'm starving.  That was enough for me to see Cathy's unwavering devotion for me.

It is not my thing to rationalize or spiritualize about my misfortunes in life but with all the blessings that replaced the three thousand pesos I lost, I gained more and received more.  I still won't give no excuse for the insensitivity and callousness of people who go through life stealing from other people's hard earned money, but what can I do?  I now would rather get on with my life knowing that there are more good people than rotten ones.  I will suspend the question on the nature of men at this point.   Losing three thousand to pick-pockets is nothing compared to the positive-vibed people around me, supporting me--Cathy is number one on that list.

A certain Marshall, by the way, called in that same day.  He said they found my wallet in their shop in Tutuban and he'll keep it until I pick it up whenever I can.  I'm just waiting for my dad to come home and then I'll have my favorite unlucky green wallet again.

How much is a day with Cathy?  Three thousand pesos is not enough even to score a second of her.  I so love my future wife; I can lose everything else but her.  I found my fortune in the 16 hours of being together.  I know I said this before, but she is my pearl of great price; my heart belongs to her.  Priceless is she.

Plugged into: Jack Johnson's Better Together