The Best Birthday Gift Ever

I just turned thirty and unlike the past years, I didn't celebrate this year. However, I still received a couple of gifts - a pair of Nike Air, a black Penshoppe shirt and a short poem from a student. The last was the one I liked the best. Let me share it with you. Teacher Rhosel by Paola Eunice Basinillo Teacher Rhosel teaches us in Grade Four She makes us want to learn some more The way she teaches is different but exciting It makes English look so very inviting. She's a great teacher, one of the best And she's good in coaching for the Sportsfest Hard lessons become so easy And she doesn't say anything cheesy. She's very cool and nice too. And she can do stuff that I never knew She says funny jokes and has lots of stories to tell. And her voice? Loud and clear as a bell. That poem makes THREE-ZERO worthwhile. I'm glad that I have inspired someone. I guess this poem just tells me that I really am called to be a teacher. Awesome! I hope I become an inspiration to more students and that they would love English the way that I do too.

Overcoming Aging

Wouldn't it be just weird if you were born looking like an 80-year old, and as you grow, your physical features become young? That is the curious case of Benjamin Button. I happened to see the trailer of this film and found the story very intriguing indeed. Imagine that? Instead of going through the normal and painful process of aging, you simply overcome it and age inversely. That kept me thinking. F. Scott Fitzgerald must be a very brilliant writer to have ever imagined such curious case. I just turned three-zero (30) a few days ago, and wondered how it would be like to not age. I am lucky because I don't exactly look my age. Some people who don't really know me would comment that I look like a college student. One friend asked me if I could share the fountain of youth that I've been hiding. People want to know my secret, but I don't have any. It's genes I guess. I hope that when I'm 40, I would look ten years younger. Today, there are a lot of anti-oxidants and supplements that supposedly helps defy skin aging. Some people even go to dermatologists to have botox shots. Other well-off people would even consider plastic surgery just to look young. Everybody wants to be immortal somehow and many seem afraid to physically deteriorate. But aging is really inevitable. The only thing we could do is to learn how to age gracefully. It really doesn't matter how old you look. What matters is that with age, comes wisdom. It really would be pathetic to have aged but have accomplished and learned nothing; to have grown old but have loved and cared for no one; and to have matured but have gone spiritually nowhere. Life is short. I sometimes contemplate about how my life would end. Yes, having to think of death is indeed morbid, but with this in mind, I live my life like it's always my last day. But I also live life to the fullest in Christ because of a promise. A promise, that one day, beyond this physical realm, I will live with no fear of death itself, because I have already overcome. Age has a limit that renders us powerless because it signifies that there is an end. However, the day will come, when I don't need to worry about aging, or even aging inversely as with the case of Benjamin Button. Because on the day that I overcome, aging has no power over me anymore.

Men in Pink Shoes

A man in pink shoes. This is an idiom I made myself. It simply means - a man doing a woman's job. Looking for a living is very difficult these days, and because of this fact, many of our today's men has stepped down from their macho pedestals and have resorted to wear pink shoes. Haven't you noticed that there are more male nurses and teachers now, than 20 years ago? There are also more male caregivers and now there are more male nannies and not to mention - housebunds (male version of housewives). We just hired a male nanny for my son. He also works as a house boy. He finds that there is nothing gay about it. He has a positive outlook in life and for the first time,I had a good feeling about hiring him. I have confidence that he would do his job better than the other female nannies we hired. Sometimes, the only person who could do a better job in a lady's work is a man. I think John is that guy. My husband is also a housebund. I am not ashamed to admit that during the morning, he takes care of my son, washes clothes and cleans some part of our house. He does his job excellently, and I am proud of how he has raised my son Ken. Doing a ladies work doesn't mean that a guy is gay. It only means that the guy is not insecure of his macho image and that he is ready to do a lady's job if necessary. I, personally think, that a lady's job doesn't make a guy less of a man when he does it. In actuality, it makes him more in touch of his feminine side and makes him more of a complete being.

The City of Ember and Other Apocalyptic Movies

In this day and age, with all the catastrophes happening in every part of the world, it is not impossible for mankind to be endangered. With this in mind, many scientists are now trying to look for solutions to serious problems that may arise when nature unleashes to us its unknown fury. In a documentary entitled The Inconvenient Truth, Former United States Vice President Al Gore showed the relevance of global warming to mankind’s future. Fifty years from now, scientists predict that the earth will experience the next ice age. If what the scientists are saying comes true, millions of people will die. So environmentalists are imploring that we must all work together to save our planet from total destruction. We must all work together for our own self preservation.

A few nights ago, I watched a movie entitled The City of Ember. The City of Ember is a story about a place built underground by great engineers of the past. The purpose for which is for the preservation of mankind. A calamity of some sort befell the earth and the only solution so that mankind won’t be totally obliterated was for them to build a city underground. The key outside the city was entrusted to the present mayor who will then pass it on to the next. But then, as the years passed by, the key was forgotten, and so was the knowledge that there was a world beyond the City of Ember. For more than two-hundred years, the people lived underground, with no sunlight and with too much dependence on electricity. People in the City of Ember were already experiencing shortage of food and electrical malfunctions. That’s because they were only meant to live there for two hundred years and not more. Their supply was depleting and they were all living in poverty, thanks to the mayor who has forgotten about the key.

Two young adults were able to discover the key that would let them out the City of Ember. Through faith and perseverance they were able to find all the clues that would lead them out of the city. When they finally got out, it was their first time to see the sun and the sky. The earth was covered with lush greens and it was like paradise. Soon, the news spread to the City of Ember, and everyone was able to go out and live in the new earth once again.

An underground city is not impossible with today’s technology. If worse would come to worst, mankind might be forced to this similar kind of situation if indeed the next ice age is coming. Heaven forbid that it doesn’t come. Apocalyptic movies (i.e. I Am Legend, Day After Tomorrow, The Happening) remind us that we should all be concerned of our environment. Everything that we do affects everyone else, so we have to be mindful of our actions. We should all work together against global warming and other things that would destroy mankind and the environment. It is not enough that we rally. We have to inform those who don’t know. It is also not enough to inform. We should also act and the right time is NOW.

Love Simply Is

Love is a universal language. Children and adults alike have their own unique concept of love. However we define it, there is no right or wrong, because love can be a thousand words all at the same time – a totality of every ounce of our being, infused with all of our sweet and bitter experiences brought about by this supposed complication. Love can be described in all sorts of adjectives ranging from the first letter of the alphabet to the last. Love is amazing, boundless, complex, dependable, enigmatic, and fascinating. Love is golden, humble, integral, joyful, knowing and loyal. Love can also be mysterious, noble, ostensible, poetic, quintessential, and romantic. Love is also superlative, tender, ubiquitous, valiant, warm, yielding and zealous. Love can do all sorts of things. Love absorbs, beguiles, cheers, and desires. It energizes and fascinates. Love gambles, hopes, and also it inspires. Love also joins, keeps, and also lavishes. Love can merge, numb, occupy, and provide. At the same time love can quench and rave. Love can scorch, tantalize, understand, and validate. Love wins. Love yearns. Love can be compared to thousands of things. Love is like an amalgam, a buffer, a circus. It could be a drug, electricity or even fire. Love is like a grenade, a hazard, an impulse. Love is a joyride. Love can sometimes be a killer. Love is a legacy. It is magic. Love is like nimbus clouds, or an oracle, a path to salvation. Love is a question. It is like a river, the sun, a train. Love is an umbrella, a vacuum, a waterfall, an x-ray. Love is like yoga. Love is like the zoo. Indeed our personal definition of love could prove to be the sum of all our own experiences and the words we choose to use. We try to define love as an attempt to understand and verify what we feel. But, in the greater scope of things, love is too precious to ever be limited into words that could make it tangible. Words may never be enough, and when words wouldn’t suffice, one thing is for sure – as Paolo Coelho simply states in his book The Witch of Portobello. . . love simply is.

From Hate to Indifference

There is this person that I won’t care to even name, who has hurt me more than any human being alive. He has inflicted the kind of hurt that surpasses the pain you get from an operation, and this hurt would take years to heal or maybe even never. At first, his despicable acts were just dismissed as immaturity. I forgave. I let him be. But the forgiveness of humans ends, and I have come to a saturation point - I have nothing more to give. I once regarded this person highly. I have mistaken his self-righteousness as dignity, his immaturity as logical reasoning, and his bribery as generosity. The little ounce of respect that I have for him has diminished into a speck. If he pushes me to the limit, the speck might even be reduced into nothingness. Heaven forbid that I lose myself and unleash to him all the resentment that is just deep within me – written in my heart like it was a piece of paper, a short novel of his shortcomings – ready to be recounted and etched to his soul until the end of his days. Sometimes when I close my eyes and picture him in my mind, I see only a pig wallowing in the mud. That is how he disgusts me. I now compare him to a filthy animal – a close to perfect representation of what he is now. Actually, a pig doesn’t even come close. He is scum. No – not scum, but the fungus that feeds on the scum. Ugh! The thought of him just makes me nauseous. I have come to the point of hating him. But soon I realized that hating him is not worth my energy. A friend told me that the reason why I hate him is because I love him. That’s true. The reason I was beyond furious with him is because I cared. How could I not care? In me runs the same blood. Because of his vile acts, I have come to a decision to renounce him and figuratively wash his blood away from my veins with the mighty name of someone higher. I have decided to cross from hate to indifference. At least when I am indifferent, I wouldn’t give a damn anymore. It is easier than hating, because I don’t have to invest feelings. Slowly I am unlearning the process of hating. Now I am just trying to be numb. When he walks around, I pretend that I don’t see him. When he talks I pretend that I don’t hear him. It’s easier to pretend that he doesn’t exist. Maybe if I wait long enough, I don’t need to pretend anymore.

25 Random Things About Me

1. I have two dimples. 2. I was a lead singer in a band called Sepia's Whirl. 3. I am a grade school English teacher in Morning Star Montessori School Inc. 4. I hate Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. I think it is the suckiest book ever! 5. I play the guitar and the piano (but only a little). 6. I love to sing . . . 7. Right now, my favorite song is Take a Bow by Rihanna. I can't get enough of it. I could actually relate. 8. I am already a non-catholic. I don't believe in religion. But I am not an atheist. 9. I love going to school! School rocks! 10. My favorite CGI animated movie is Happy Feet. 11. My blog site is www.rhosel.blogspot.com 12. I want to meet an American Indian someday. 13. I once wrote to Santa Claus when I was a kid. I had my mom mail it and I got a reply. 14. I have managed to smoke 4 sticks of cigarrette out of anger. Those were the first and last four cigarrettes that I would ever touch. 15. I am allergic to beer. It makes me itch. 16. I have a relatively high lexile score of 1344. 17. I love to collect keychains. 18. I dream of writing a children's book someday. 19. I am a fan of Sandra Boynton's books. 20. In Sesame Street, I am annoyed at Bert. He is so uptight! 21. I had a crush on my Chemistry teacher when I was still in college. His name is EJ. Haha. 22. I had an imaginary friend named Ricky when I was young. 23. The first thing that I want to unlearn is hating. 24. Sometimes I could be so emo. 25. I can solve the rubix cube in 2 minutes. There . . . 25 random things. I didn't think about them so I don't if it made sense. Maybe I will ad 25 more in the future. For now, these would have to do.

Bedtime Stories

As far as I could recall, I don’t think I could remember my parents reading me a bedtime story before I went to sleep. What I do remember is that I used to watch a lot of TV at night until I felt the fatigue slowly crumble by defenses and leave me knocked out in minutes. Bedtime stories aren’t really part of my culture. At a young age of three, I already knew how to read. I was the one who picked my own bedtime story, and then I read the book myself. However, books never made me sleepy, nor had they affected my dreams when I was young. Whatever I know about bedtime stories, I learned it from the boob tube and through reading. No one really told me anything, nor did anyone sing me a mere lullaby. My parents were both busy with their work. I never got to hear any bed time story from them. I have no bitterness, whatsoever, but it would have been nice to at least remember being tucked in by either my mom or my dad, and at least recall a bedtime story they told me before I went to sleep. They could object to my sentiments if their memory hasn’t yet failed them and they could prove that I have infantile amnesia. However, that is not the case. Even if I try hard to backtrack the events in my childhood, I can’t remember any bedtime story. Not even one. I watched Walt Disney’s Bedtime Stories (starring: Adam Sandler, Keri Russel) with my kid last Sunday and both of us enjoyed the movie. Skeeter (Adam Sandler), a hotel handyman, was asked by his sister to babysit for his nephew and niece for a week. He has been a handyman for the hotel for 25 years and he yearned nothing more but be recognized for his efforts and be rewarded by the tycoon to be the manager of the hotel. During his stay with his sister’s kids, he told them bedtime stories closely related to his life. Skeeter would use fictional characters and storybook-kind of settings to give color to his stories. The children modified some parts of his stories and by some strange coincidence, the bedtime stories he told the kids would come true the next day. At the end of the film, Skeeter got what he wanted and lived the life that he was supposed to live. The film showed the concept of positive visualization. Through stories, we could bring to life all the hidden desires of our heart. By believing the stories we made, we unconsciously make our own wishes come true. Skeeter has done that through creating bedtime stories for the kids. Although in real life, our positive visualization doesn’t really happen in a too uncanny way, there are some instances that what we wish for happens to us unexpectedly through weird circumstances. I guess my parents didn’t tell me bedtime stories from their own experiences because they are way too accomplished to ever dream of anything else. Positive visualization wouldn’t work on my mom because she has always been a doer and not a dreamer. I have never seen any literary creativity from them so it was understandable. Now I have my own son to worry about. One day, he will ask me to read him a bed time story. Being an English teacher, and being someone who supports reading literacy, I hope I will not fail him. I pray that I wouldn’t be too busy preparing my lessons for the next day or too tired to even tuck my son in bed and read him a goodnight story. If ever I have memory gap and that my parents would contest that they did really tell me a bedtime story when I was young, I would take this as a challenge to make the bedtime stories that I’m going to tell Ken be memorable so he would not forget them.

The American Dream

When I was still a kid, and when I still had no sense of Philippine nationalism, I have always wanted to go to America. I was told that all the good stuff was in that country, and being another nationality other than being American is second rate. People around me have influenced me to have the American dream - my father being the biggest promoter. He would usually talk to me in a tone with suggestive materialism. His words betrayed the envy his heart concealed. Out of respect, I wanted to fulfill his desire by making the American dream also my own. My father said to me one time, “Wow! Your cousin in North Carolina has already her own house! She also has her own car and even has her own apartment.” He said that with the obvious intent of making me crave the material blessings my cousin is now enjoying. When he said that, his purpose was to tug at my materialistic human nature and hope that I would strive to have the same amount of wealth. And then, my father would add, “Your cousin has given her parents free plane tickets to visit her at North Carolina. . . I wonder when I would be able to go to United States of America.” Sometimes my father says things with a great deal of insensitivity. Maybe by saying his wishes out loud, by some miracle, I just might make it come true for him. Life in the United States is very promising indeed. Who wouldn’t want to live in America? The salary you would get is ten times bigger than what you get here. After graduation, I thought of a thousand and one ways on how to get there. Some of my ideas were actually feasible and reasonable. Some were just plain stupid and insane. If I just exerted an enormous amount of effort into any of those workable solutions, I might have been in America right after I graduated. First option was getting a scholarship. The second was finding an agency to help me find a teaching career in any of the states. Third was getting my cousin to help me with my applications. The most desperate option was finding an American guy to love me and marry me. However, I didn’t push through to any one of them, because sooner, I realized that I wouldn’t be happy fulfilling somebody else’s dream. When I tried to assess my present situation here, I had an epiphany - Not all the world is America. The world is where you are. These are famous words from a Filipino National Artist. It’s true. The grass is no more greener than the other side. I have decided to follow my mother’s advice that I should be thankful with what I already have. Right now, I could say that I am lucky to have a job close to home. I am lucky that I am not desperate enough for money to leave my Filipino identity just to make a living. I guess I am a big disappointment to my father who hopes that I could somehow fulfill his dream for him. I don’t regret not being able to go to America. I have no desire for it anymore. The cold temperature is discouragement enough. Discrimination makes it even worse. If ever I would go there, it would be for leisure and not for work. I would rather stay in my homeland with a meager salary than slave-off in a different country without my family. Better yet, I would rather be a first rate Filipino, than a second rate American wannabe.

Dreamcatcher

My Navajo friend will send me a dreamcatcher through the mail and I am really excited about it. Although there are dreamcatchers available in the mall, it is not the same as having a real American Native give one to you.

I learned about dreamcatchers from what I read about American Indians. Below is the definition of a dreamcatcher from Wikipedia:

Dreamcatchers originated from the Ojibwa Nation, during the Pan- Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. They were adopted by Native Americans of a number of different Nations. They came to be seen by some as a symbol of unity among the various Indian Nations, and as a general symbol of identification with Native American or First Nations cultures.

Traditionally, the Ojibwa construct dreamcatchers by tying sinew strands in a web around a small round or tear-shaped frame of willow. The resulting "dream-catcher", hung above the bed, is then used as a charm to protect sleeping children from nightmares. Dreamcatchers made of willow and sinew are not meant to last forever but instead are intended to dry out and collapse over time as the child enters the age of adulthood.

The Ojibwa believe that a dreamcatcher changes a person's dreams. According to Terri J. Andrews in the article "Living by the Dream," about the Ojibwa nation in the magazine World & I, Nov. 1998 page 204, "Only good dreams would be allowed to filter through . . . Bad dreams would stay in the net, disappearing with the light of day."

It's recommended to hang the dream catcher above someone sleeping to guard against bad dreams. Good dreams pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper. Another legend "Good dreams pass through the center hole to the sleeping person. The bad dreams are trapped in the web, where they perish in the light of dawn."

I am not a superstitious person, so I wouldn't be relying on a dreamcatcher to protect me from my sleep. Bad dreams come even when you're awake. As soon as I receive the dreamcatcher from my Navajo friend, I would hang it right away. Not for decorative purposes, nor for protection. I will hang it for the remembrance of a beautiful culture that is slowly fading away. The dreamcatcher is one of the American Indian's last surviving icon that is accepted by pop culture. By having one, I am imparting awareness to people who don't know that such wonderful culture exist.