is there anybody out there who loves the rain?  i count myself in.

there a lot of downsides to rains:  the floods, the lightning, the traffic, businesses going slow, crops getting devastated, people getting sick, others die.  in fact, for this particular storm, juaning, twenty are already dead and the storm's not even over yet.  my review class got canceled and i had to travel all the way from bataan.  I couldn't sleep on the bus, the highway is slippery and it's hard to nap when u know danger is lurking.  at least if the the bus skids, i could hold on to something.  but still, we'll never know, death comes when it comes.  

i'm a rain person, i love the rain so it's hard to become jubilant or ecstatic when you're aware that many are crowding the evacuation centers, some hungry and cold and sick.  i can imagine little children crying.  there were few houses that were downed by flash floods and the families were not able to save even their clothes (much more all the stuff that they worked hard and saved for).  i never went through any of those but i feel for these people .  i sit here all comfy, warm and dry while they go through these sufferings.  all my ever happy memories of the rain are drowning by what's truly happening in the environment.  it seems normal to hear about flash floods and landslides and one month worth of rain pouring in just a few hours.  this isn't the case years back.

good things don't last.  nothing on earth will last and all the beauty we know, they have deadlines.

The Age Game

An unexpectedly and short encounter I had one day while taking a regular bus ride on a regular day to my review. Here is how it went:
me: Morayta (while handing out my fare to the bus conductor)
conductor: Estudyante?
me: Hindi po (w/ a serious look on my face).
conductor: Mukha lang? (smiling w/ a tinge of nambobola-look)
me: (just smiled back because what he said has not sunk in yet..)

When it comes to conversations, I lag sometimes. It takes a few seconds before I realize that what was really said to me. If took a minute and I still didn't get it, that meant I am never going to get it which meant I would need to make some clarifications. As to the case of the bus conductor, I didn't have that chance and even I did, I wouldn't want to make the conversation longer and that has nothing to do with his being a bus conductor.


Going back to what I was supposed to write, my age has been a subject of guessing games dozens of times. I check the mirror and I don't really look I'm turning 36 this year. I'm not bragging about it. It's just that I'm happy that I look young. Maybe it has something to do with my built being small-medium. My height, I'm the shortest among my siblings. And soon enough, my daughters will be taller than me. Well, I do make some efforts to keep Lucille young-looking (not by the clothes, promise) but I think there's something more than physical that makes a person young. I don't know.. maybe my thoughts, my memories, my positive views. If I were to look inside me, I don't really feel far from being the child I know. When people become adults, they leave the child in them behind (I'm not talking here of maturity, ok, 'cause that's a whole different topic). I guess I can say I didn't do that part. I can still feel how the concrete road felt when I walked and ran barefoot, I can still feel how the breeze blew after a storm, I can still hear the raindrops as it softly hit our roof, I know exactly how our garden and front street looked looking out our from window, the kids singing Christmas carols in front of our door. All these things are still with me, not really making my baggage heavier. Ironically, it makes my life lighter.

To conclude, I don't really feel I look young.. It's more like I feel I'm still YOUNG, literally.