Philippine Veterans Week 2013

Araw ng Kagitingan, Mt. Samat Shrine

Pilar, Bataan, 09 April 2013

Paggunita sa Capas, Capas National Shrine

Capas, Tarlac, 10 April 2013

2013 April 09

A boy plays with his wooden toy banca along the beach at Bagac, Bataan.

Taken by my phone's lousy camera. (Yes, that's a wooden toy banca he's pulling.)

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There's a kind of buzz in my ears and tingling in my toes whenever I get sent to events which are also covered by other media practitioners. These reporters and writers and photographers and cameramen are so diverse at first glance, but are there for a common purpose. I look at their cunning and snappy manner. I observe their confidence (or lack of fucks to give haha) while talking to the bigshots. I marvel at their persistence in squeezing out the juicier detail. I look at the throng of cameras they carry and the endless flash of light. I look at the big microphones and the IDs slung at their necks with the various emblems of their respective organizations, but all bearing the same huge block of letters in red, proclaiming they are part of the fourth estate.

My 2013 is crazy awesome so far

The end of the first quarter of the year is almost here and 2013 is proving to be quite incredible to date.

Real life seems to be pretty calm. I don't have hell weeks anymore, for starters, unlike during this time a year ago when the mere sprouting of leaves and petals of the sunflowers along the University Avenue gave me generous amounts of anxiety and fear. Challenges in my new workplace are sure to come, I'm pretty sure. So I'm mustering all that I have learned in college for that. 

Speaking which, the Journ Department of UP CMC was named Center for Excellence by the Commission on Higher Education (again, of course). I'm proud of my alma mater, if that is not quite obvious yet. I'm just not sure if it is as proud of me, though. Haha.

2013 is also made more awesome by the Manila leg of Stars' The North Album Tour. That night of February 16 is going to be one of the, if not the, highlights of my year. Incredible experience. 

My fiction and fantasy-loving self is also quite overwhelmed by what I have what I have seen, read and watched so far. A team mate from my previous workplace lent me three books, one of which is Begin to Exit Here by John Welter. It is a highly-satirical and witty novel about a (cynical) journalist who hates journalism and who's always ready with tongue-in-cheek jokes, and his exploits in a local newspaper. It was a light read, and I couldn't have read it at a better time. Haha. I imagine it would make a good Hollywood film if done right. 

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Maybe it's love,
Love at first slightly drunk
Now I'm walking with the sun
In my mouth

Was there no one, no one at all, they'd ask.

You were a different thing entirely, I'd reason in my mind. You are the scribble in green ink at the last page of my notepad, the page I refuse to tear off, the page I refuse to write anything else on. You are behind the wheel of every ashen red car that passes by. You are the first greeting in the morning and the last before bedtime, the pointless volley of text messages that makes idle hours bearable. You are every three-digit number that ends in 4. You are beach campfires and windy nights when the milky orb is waxing and the stars unabashedly glitter in the sky. You are the calm voice trying to instill reason in my haphazard ways. You are the silly board games and sillier jokes during night-outs. You are my first bottle of beer, the incessant beat of the drums in my head, the unread book on my bedside table. You are the companionship I thought I had and never will know anymore. You are solitude and the hope I harbored.

No, I'd say, there was nobody.

Why, they'd ask. The voice in my head would answer, I guess because I didn't try. You have been no one yet you were so many things.

What's your middle name?
How do you play the game?
I'll the be the first to leave*

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* from Midnight Coward by Stars (In Our Bedroom After the War, 2007)