Our Degas

Gutsy Sadie. Junior ko.

Trampoline at Eastwood

After Sabine's Ballet recital, we went to Eastwood for a snack at KFC. Then we took a stroll and ended up enjoying some "air time"

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Dad just turned 79 years old today. We went bowling at SM North EDSA. He rolled a 114. May he reach that age with MORE health, wealth and happiness.

Wakeboard

In front of our log cabin, just before our wakeskating and kneeboarding adventure.

Sage Kneeboarding at CWC

Zipline with Sage

the zipline wasn't really that fast. it's more like a "ZZZ" line. but the gentle speed afforded us the luxury of enjoying the view of the lake and the canopy of the trees just a few stories below us.

So many girls, so little time... WAAAAAHHH!!!




Tristan: Dad, you know your boobs are bigger than the first grader chick who was hitting on me yesterday?

Me: Dude, unless you can take me on the ring with the gloves off, I suggest you lay off talking about my manboobs. capisce?

Tristan: Chill old man. I'm just messin' with you.

Me: Hey, wanna check out the french chicks by the pool?

Tristan: As long as you promise me you won't tell Mom, The Sisters,

Me: Scout's honor, dude.

Tristan: Swweeettt...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAGE!

Sage, you chose a very simple cake (Brazo de mercedes type.) And blew a candle that even though had seen better days, was made special because it was the only candle who heard you make your 10th bday wish

Gun Ban...

Sabine as an out of this world "Kitloyd"

The North Face

Dear Kids,

Yesterday was my 42nd Birthday on this Earth, I was lucky enough to have a woman who indulges me my every whim. I asked her if I could go wall climbing and like a sexy genie in a bottle, she granted my wish. Off we went to Market! Market at the Fort.


It was around 11:30 AM. While everyone in the world was watching Manny Pacquiao pummel a low calibered fighter named Clottey, I was living a very small part of my dream.

The dudes manning the Sandugo.Ph wall climbing facility at fifth floor of Market! Market! told us that we only have to pay P50 per climb. It was a come on for the undecided to make them shift from being an onlooker to a wannabee adventurer. What they fail (or deliberately failed) to tell us was we have to pay an additional 200 pesos for the dudes outside who will stay on the ground as we climb up. They will pull on the harness attached to us to break our fall or pull us down when we have completed the climb. I had to grudgingly shell out precious moolah.

After putting on the harness I began my self-propelled ascent to the top of the world… I mean… wall.
Itutuloy...

testing

123

Akyat Center

When I was a kid as a treat to me when we visit Manila, My Dad would usually drive by Roxas boulevard so that we can see the then lonely monolith, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, rising from what used to be the waters of Manila Bay. Once sighted, I remember I always excitedly wrap my arms around my Mother’s neck as I try to pull myself up from the car seat while shouting “Akyat Center, Akyat Center!” (It was a signal to my Dad. I wanted him to drive the car up the ramp of the Cultural Center so that we can view the length of Roxas Boulevard from the top and then glide down on the other end like a slow moving plane coming back to the level of the earth). That was “the event” that I usually looked forward to whenever we came over for the Christmas Holidays.

My Dad is still fond of telling this story to his grand kids, or at least to those who would patiently listen.

My parents kept on with the routine of taking me to the top of the CCP until those who ran the complex wised-up and started to politely refuse the general public access to the ramps.

That’s why ever since I can remember CCP, had a mystical hold on me-- even though the shows regularly held there were not interesting to me. Because, frankly, they are beyond my budget for entertainment. To me they were expensive and uninteresting…

…Except for the coming show on March 28.

Yesterday Ayheen told me that she was informed by Sabine’s Ballet teacher that she is going to join their Corps’ recital at the CCP on March 28.

This Date happens to be Sage’s Birthday too.

Sabine has been taking Ballet Lessons for only 2 months now that’s why we didn’t expect her to be a part of any show.

So this means just like my Dad, who will be watching the Ballet Recital with us, Sabine will take me to the top of the Cultural Center too, along with her sisters, brother and those who are closest to our Hearts.

I’m sure the landscape that I will view from the top has changed after all these years

BUT not the kind of love that has brought me back there.

I can’t wait to see Sadie and Tristan’s faces when we go up that ramp…

Bravo, Sabine!

Happy Birthday, Ate Sage!!!

Sunday Morning... February 21

A Sage at 9 years old

Happy Bloody Valentine's Day...

Me> On a hot summer night, would you offer your bloody throat to the wolf with the red roses...

Wife> Yes...

Me> owws? Bolera. I bet you say that to all the boys.

Walking in the Sun...

“You might as well be walking on the sun…”


This morning, while stuck in traffic somewhere under the bridge along floodway, Pasig, Janine, Sage and Kay were talking about how one of their classmates saw a planet the other night. The conversation drifted to include the Stars and the Sun (One of them noted that the sun is the nearest star to Earth.)

Janine skeptically asked off-handedly, “Can a person really walk on the sun?”

Sage answered her “No.”

Then Kay chipped in “they can only walk on the sun in Phineas and Ferb (a cartoon series on TV.)”

Then somebody asked is the sun the biggest star? During the pause that ensued, I volunteered that sometimes stars like our sun balloon into really gigantic stars called “red giants.”

They asked how really big do they get? I answered, the sun can become so big it will gobble up the Earth. In the rear view mirror I could see Sage and Kay got a little upset with what I said.

So I added “don’t worry about it, by the time that happens we will all be long gone, including everyone we know and their great, great, great, great grandchildren.”

“What’s the difference between the Milky way and Black hole?” I realized I just opened the Pandora’s box of Janine’s curiosity. Kay gamely answered, “I know: Milky Way is white chocolate while a black hole is a Dark chocolate.” This brought the house down. I mean, Car. We we’re laughing so hard at how ingeniously she phrased the metaphor.

I just added that the milky way is one of the galaxies in space where our own sun is located while the black hole is formed when a red giant becomes so big. I asked them, “what happens to a balloon that has grown so big?” unanimously they said, “It explodes.”

Boom! I said that’s how black holes are formed. Imagine a Red Giant Star exploding because it becomes so heavy, it collapses and becomes smaller than my thumb. Its gravity will suck in everything around it including light…

Then it hit me! Susmaryosep! I’m talking about General Relativity to Grade Schoolers and they are gamely taking it in stride.

“Why did God create other planets when no one lives there?” Wow! That was a hard one. Janine was on a roll. As far as I’m concerned she just asked the grade school equivalent of the question “If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it make a sound?” I felt my nose will bleed in a few seconds…

Thank God one of them said that if someday when the sun becomes too big and gobbles up the Earth, we will need to live on other Planets.

Kay exclaimed “Then we will be the aliens in those planets!” (I just realized that James Cameron’s film “Avatar” has entrenched itself in our pop culture.)

When we reached another bottle neck in the Eastwood area, Janine asked “Tito Marvin, is there a planet where time stops.” Ok, I asked myself how the hell does one explain special relativity to a 5th grader?

I treaded carefully, I said we can not really stop time but time slows down. “Ate Janine, right now our car is traveling at around 30 kilometers per hour because we’re in traffic (and we are running late). If your friend is in a car that is traveling at the speed of light , which is almost 300,000 kilometers per SECOND, time will slow down. Once you catch up with your friend who is now in School after riding in a car that traveled at almost the speed of light, and you compare your watches, you will see that her watch ran slower than yours.

I think it was Kay who asked “what about the watch of somebody on a Jet plane who is not traveling as fast as light?”

I answered that there will also be a difference in their watches when compared to the one who traveled on a Jet plane. But I added that difference will be so small.

Kay guessed “Will the difference be one second?”

I answered “Well, not quite. You guys studied FRACTIONS and DECIMALS, right?” I continued, “the difference can be measured by probably a billionth of a second.”

Sage commented that no one can feel THAT difference. Everyone including Sabine agreed with her. On the flyover while looking out the window, she commented that the Sun is like a giant ball with many flashlights. Then added that Ms. Romero said that there was a place called “Big Apple” not because it contains Red Giant Apples but because of the many people there.

I said, “That’s New York.”

I think it was Janine who sang the chorus of “Empire State of Mind.” Mercifully, the conversation shifted to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. I secretly breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God. I told myself I can relax now. Talking about the Grammy Awards and Beyonce will not make my nose bleed unlike the previous topic.

January 26, Sadie's Birthday

Ballerina Girl

Recent Adventures

On the way to Enchanted Kingdom, last month, they trained Sadie to ask "Are we there yet?" Notice how they made Sadie close her eyes so that she will be able to concentrate on asking that irritating question and not be distracted by the scenery outside.





Enchanted Kingdom's Space Shuttle...

I was the one whispering into the cam phone the words "first loop.... not bad" and something unintelligible that I can't remember now. I was not the idiot shouting his lungs out like a 5 year old kid in his first roller coaster ride


Sage really enjoyed this. Buti nalang. I thought she'd find it boring and sleep halfway through the glide over the lake.


Look at how she posed for the camera...


That was me giving Sage the Thumb's up sign.

The Lovely Bones

“THE LOVELY BONES.”

Jimmy Lichauco once said that Karma is a law of the universe. Simply put, the evil that happens to you is a direct result of what you did or did not do.

Bullshit... (Pls. excuse my French.)

Everytime I hear self-proclaimed psychics like Jimmy Lichauco talk about Karma, I become nauseated. Because I remember kids like Jon Benet Ramsey and the other DESAPERACIDOS, kids, mostly girls, abducted, molested, and then ultimately murdered.

It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that Jimmy Lichauco is dead wrong. These girls did not, could not have done anything to deserve their fate. If Karma is indeed a universal law like gravity or thermodynamics, then there wouldn’t be any girls like Susie Salmon, the lead character in the novel, Lovely Bones (LB for brevity.)

That book gave a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding the murder and brutal molestation of a teenage girl. She was 14. In the vernacular, “Katorse.”
The same age recently, unfairly, sexualized by a popular telenobela. (Coinicidentally, I finished reading the book LB while the women in my life were watching the replacement of that telenobela in the same room with me.)

IT still gives me chills. I believe in God and the Goodness, Justness of God. But I don’t believe in ghosts or vampires or the Devil. And I believe that Satan is just a symbol of evil lurking within the human heart. Satan is Wrath, Satan is Cancer, Satan is Ignorance- Like the kind of Ignorance being imposed on us by people like Jimmy Lichauco who want us to believe in the extraordinary claim of existence of ghosts without satisfying our scientific requirement for extraordinary proof.

It takes more than a story about ghosts to scare the living daylights out of me. But this book about ghosts, LB, still gives me chills.

I’m scared because even though I know there is no proof that the devil or evil ghosts, or those who have sold their very souls to the devil are capable of breaking the laws of physics, books like LB make me realize that Satan doesn’t need to break Einstein’s laws to wreak havoc in our lives. Satan may not be able make a book levitate at will because laws of gravity prevent him from doing so, but he can whisper unimaginable wrath into the human heart owned by someone flying a passenger plane. With that wrath he could will the pilot to plow the plane into the World Trade Center.

The perpetrator of evil in the book, serial killer/rapist George Harvey, doesn’t have horns, or hoofs, or tail.

Just like Jason Ivler.

He could be anyone. You can never know. Because how exactly can you gauge the human heart? That’s why, as I have said, IGNORANCE is EVIL.

That’s why, reading that book made me paranoid. I wanted to arm those women in my life and my kids and my son with assault rifles whenever they step out of the house, or make them put on chastity belts, or implant them with indestructible Adamantium claws of Wolverine. I couldn’t do that. I could enroll them in self-defense classes for them to learn the ways of mortal combat.

But the truth is, all I can really do is pray as hard as I can for them to be delivered from evil, everyday of their lives…

And he said...

And he said 'cast your burdens upon me
those who are heavily laiden

come to me all of you who are tired
of carrying heavy load

come to me...

and I will give you rest.'

Dear God, I realized that this is my first blog entry for the new year... for the new decade. I want to thank you... after so long a time

THANK YOU

for lifting that heavy burden.
for letting me see there is real beauty within
for showing me, I'm not a beast at all.

Now I can have faith in myself again.

Merci Tres Beaucoup.

Predictions for 2009 (NOT 2010)

Nostradamus was a man who wasn’t able to predict anything about the future. Those who study his

writings can not predict anything accurate enough to be of any use to anyone. His quartrains are good only as propaganda to sell poorly written books, B movies, and pseudo documentaries about the supposed existence of “psychic” powers.

Nostradamus’ writings are also useful to dictators like Hitler.

Before the Nazi invasion of France, Joseph Goebbels,
the chief Hitler propagandist, circulated a lie: he said that based on the predictions of this obscure French Doctor, His boss will succeed in invading the whole world. Those in France who were superstitious enough to believe this lie unwittingly contributed to the capitulation of their country to Hitler. In essence, Nostradamus’ writings not only succeeded in pulling the National IQ of France a few notches lower than before, it also contributed to its temporary defeat by lowering its morale.

The truth is, his writings are so vague, if you are smart enough you can take any of them out of context and make it appear that he was able to predict what you had for breakfast this morning. All you have to do is make a vague connection with what he wrote, and Voila! You can make it appear that Nostradamus was able to foretell, HUNDREDS OF YEAR AGO, that you had hot dog sandwich and brewed coffee while watching CNN.

Because they are so vague, you can connect anything he wrote to anything else that has

happened YESTERDAY
or is happening around you NOW.
But you CAN NOT use his writings to predict what WILL HAPPEN TOMMORROW.

Since Hitler’s time, Nostradamus fans have been studying his quartrains. None of them convincingly warned us about September 11, 2001. The only time they claimed that his quartrains were able to predict the 9-11 tragedy was only on September 12, 2001 (when they started connecting what happened in the immediate past to his vague writings.)



In case you missed what I just said… THEY WERE ABLE TO MAKE THE PREDICTION ONLY AFTER THE DISASTER HAPPENED.

That’s why the study of Nostradamus’ writings is also known as Bovine Eschatology (loosely translated, it means bullshit).

That being said, here are my Top 10 PREDICTIONS for the year 2009!!! (a.k.a. more useless crap) :






10. “PeaceMaker” Obama will launch missile strikes against the moon.

9. Andal Ampatuan,Jr.’s picture will be the MOST WANTED newspaper banner.

8. Cory Aquino’s Bodyguards in active duty will become famous for being INACTIVE.

7. Jinky Pacquiao will want to borrow the Golf Club of Tiger Woods’ WIFE.

6. Price of Cars and real estate will… DIVE… in Marikina and Pasig areas.

5. Obviously, NEW YORK YANKEES will win the 2009 World Series.

4. Year 2009? For Michael Jackson… This is IT.

3. Hayden Kho will show he has a SMALL talent in front of cameras.

2. This Internet RUMOR will gross-out even stomachs of steel:
VICKY BELO sex scandal.


AND MY NUMBER 1 PREDICTION FOR THE YEAR 2009…


1. Even though there are no elections, Filipinos WORLD WIDE will vote for a HERO.

My Predictions for the year 2010?... Come back next year… I’ll write them on December 2010.


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (hwag mag paloko sa mga manghuhula)

Happy New Year!

May the Next Year and the Next Decade be better than the passing one.

A Prosperous and Healthier New Year and New Decade to one and ALL!!!