my drinking buddies...or my financial supporters
one thing I like about school is the sheer fun i get conversing with my friends. i dont have a lot of friends like other people but that is because i prefer a small group whom I can regularly keep in touch with...i have such a group in southville...but among them, three people stand out...
rod steven vasquez, jrf ibañez, and francois thoenen are my closest school buds. they are the ones whom I drink with, go to the cinemas with, eat with, do assignments with (hmmm...), do projects with, scout pretty ladies with, just do anything basically with. they've been my friends ever since I went to southville and our bond is such that there's no reasson to believe that we wont be able to carry this friendship and fellowship for the rest of our lives. I have to mention another friend of mine by the name of Paulo Jaranilla - he left school sometime before but he'll be back (atleast he said). He's one of our best buds!
Let me get into each of these guys. First with Rod. Rod is 5'4, weighs like a gazillion pounds, loves cars, loves phil. telenovelas and phil. chick flicks, goes to the gym regularly but without effect, loves starbucks (like we all do), feeds their fighting cocks, eats a lot, wears expensive shades when driving his kick-ass/souped-up van, treats me in mcdo, starbucks, and movies regularly, asks for advice a lot, have trouble with girls, and seems to have a deep sense of affection for my people (the japanese).
Now on to JRF. The weird name stands for Joey, Ron, Fred but just call him jerf or as i like to call him, jerfy boy. He has these 6 packs and huge biceps and whatnot but very concious about this health. Eats like an elephant (when we were at EK, he ordered a cheeseburger meal and then ordered again two-piece chicken meal and devoured all of them in a jiffy), extremely...uhm...wants some "action", stands around 5'8, best of the bunch in basketball, richest of us all, drives a honda city, idolizes t-mac, has his shoes (the screw one), chickboi, and "wawa naman" in his love life.
France. He's a swiss-filipino who cant get enough cheese and milk. stands around 5'8 to 5'9. semi-dark complexion complete with rocker hair and goatee (ewww). very liberal in the "most boys want to do this right now thing". always asks to have drinking session (calls me in the middle of the night, with no advance notice, and fetches me with his shiny, white car, so that we can go to cavite and "hang-out" with rod). wears only dark clothes with a black hat. smokes more than he attends classes (bad).
so thats it...my dear school buddies...all of whom deeply understand the level of financial capability that i am in and thus generously and unselfishly continues to shower me with "libre". thanks and ciao!
habemus papam!
there will be certain events in my life which I will carry in my soul for all eternity. one such moment happened april 19, 2005 at exactly 11:50 pm in my cellphone time...
I tuned in to fox news channel like I always do to get an update on what was happening on the papal conclave in the vatican for the election of the new pope. commentaries as usual were being discussed but suddenly and almost an hour earlier than expected, smoke belched out from the chimney...
all the news channels including our local channels were covering the event live and everyone was in a state of sheer excitement. of course no one knew yet if the smoke was black or white (black meaning an inconclusive vote, white meaning a new pope has been elected. 6 hours before this time I witnessed black smoke so I eagerly awaited the outcome.
at first no one wanted to jump the gun and tell if the smoke was white..some stations in the vatican in fact said that the smoke was black which made the journalists visibly disapointed at first. but I saw white smoke..i felt it..this was it..the roman catholic church - the single-most important organization in the whole world, God's personal connection to this world to which he entrusted the keys to heaven - is finally getting a new leader after pope john paul IIs passing.
chills went down my spine as the tens of thousands gathered in st. peter square burst out into a beautiful array of joy and excitement. the bells of st. peter were not yet ringing so we did not know for sure if indeed a new pope has been elected. adding to the confusion, the bells will ring at the top of the hour like it always do and it did. but 4 minutes after the scheduled ringing, the bells sounded again and my emotions swept me again as it did during the passing of the previous pope. tears once again - tears which I rarely shed even when i am personally conquered with grief and despair, but such historic events can sway even a matured and hardened man as i am to sweet tears. not many here in the Phils probably witnessed this event. yet im so lucky because I witnesed both the end and the beginning of a papal transition.
sure enough, a cardinal appeared on the window balcony of st. peter's basilica and announced to the whole world that he brings great joy. habemus papam! we have a pope!
unlike many, i didnt like to speculate on who the next pope will be because I believe that the choice of the cardinals in the conclave will be guided by the power of the holy spirit. I knew the next pope will continue on the traditions of the roman catholic church which has stood the test of time and war for 2000 years. the next pope, i believed, would follow on the footsteps of pope john paul II in preserving catholic values and principles which God wishes to be preserved.
and a conservative pope was indeed what we had..cardinal joseph ratzinger of germany, one of pope john paul II's closest aides who have served him as prefect of the church doctrine for over 23 years. the "enforcer" some have dubbed him. now the world will come to know him as pope benedict XVI. and the world will love him as the world loved the previous pontiff.
catholics rejoice for religion will breath new life into our troubled world. I hope these events will strike at the hearts of the troubled youth who have distanced themselves from the teachings of Christ, teachings which the catholic church seeks to preserve for all eternity. help me in this struggle. do not be afraid.
meow-meow!
i dont have anything interesting to talk about right now because all my time is spent on either playing ps2 or daydreaming so I'll just talk about my cat.
meow (my cat's name) isnt really mine in the sense that he or she was given to me or something. meow's an adopted cat who purrs and meows all the time like any self-respecting cat would do. he does the "cat sweetums" or the act where it tries to gain your favor by driving his body into your legs...which is cute. anyway I give him food sometimes which he happens to devour in a few seconds..kinda reminds me of my friend JRF. he's like that.
the cat seems weird though and lives besides my window at the back of some stacks of chicken food. he knocks during the night and its quite scary. meow!
farewell...
this has been a sad period in catholic church history...and in fact, the whole world. pope john paul 2 went to heaven at around 3:30 am last april 3. before that day, the whole world was already expecting the inevitable.
when I dropped my playstation2 controller after a lengthy session at around 1 am, aprl 2, and tuned in to foxnews, the impression was that this could be the pope's final hours. every news channel was covering in detail and in length the event. other news programs were cancelled and suddenly the whole world was focused on the ailing pontiff.
it was a sad moment..i myself am not a person who sheds tears easily, but in moments like this wherein an effect on the most important facet of my life - my religion, my faith - is close at hand, then my emotions were just stirred into tears. i stayed awake until about 4 in the morning all the while cycling only through foxnews, cnn, bloomberg, and other news networks. when I awoke I quickly clicked on the tv and to my surprise and happiness, the pope was still alive...and even more of the world came to know the pope's struggle.
and then a press conference was shown..the pope's aides delivering the words that the pope wanted to convey to the world.
"I have looked for you, now you have come for me..."
once again I couldnt hold back my tears. this was a great man with a great legacy and now God is taking him back to a place where he could rest easily, knowing that he made an invaluable service to God and mankind.
we will miss him..and his passing have made my faith even stronger...religion is not something very fashionable to the youth nowadays, and its sad...i hope that the next pope would continue on the legacy of Pope john paul II in clinging to the traditional values and morals that for 2000 years have been preserved. they need not be changed, and God does not want them to change.
I pray that this event would mark a change of heart for our disenchanted youth, most of whom have removed God and his teachings away from their lives..
farewell our Pope. may you have a safe trip to heaven...
enchanted at EK
in order to take our minds off the sad and troubling truths that we have experienced, my barkada decided to go to enchanted kingdom. i have to thank rod vasquez for the free day pass ticket! thanks rod! di me makakasama kung nde libre. hehe. as always. thanks din kay jrf nilibre me food sa magic wok sa atc and ticket dun sa 4-d ride. bait niyo talaga
this was my 2nd time in ek. the first time i rode only rialto, log jam, and dodgem. im afraid of rides you see esp. roller coasters and anything that would put myself in abnormal level of g-forces. but i wasnt my normal self when i got to ek and my mindset was that i had nothing to lose. so i rode flying fiesta thinking it was kid's game and to my surprise my heart was shaken quite a bit. although my mind hurt more from all the circlin.
rialto was next and it was boring. i remember that robocop was the theme when i first rode the attraction but now its some spaceship thingy. there was a cute girl though among us so that was quite comforting. oh btw, rod vasquez, jrf ibanez, paolo nuguid, graziel hidalgo with his ian, and 3 of graziel's peeps were the ones with me at ek.
the next ride was something that i wasnt really prepared for but cautiously awaiting. space shuttle was a serious no-no to me before, but like i said, my heart was already crushed so there's no chance of it failing even more. so jrf and i with paolo and others (rod was scared shitless though) braced ourselves for the ride. paolo was quite experienced but jrf was visibly more scared than me. so when we got to the top and was released, putting us through high g-forces, my apprehension quicky vanished. it wasnt scary at all. the whole ride. the only part which is quite scary is the reverse corkscrew when i feel that im about to fall. in fact i was screaming "is this it?" most of the time and got the chance to belt out a " i love you ........!" while waiting to be dropped from the reverse drop. all in all it was quite nice and jrf was saying " di ako makahinga nung unang drop at kung mas matagal pa yun nahimatay na ako".
after that i saw a wishing well. and of course i took the opportunity. what do i have to lose, right?
most of our time was spent on water-rides though. riogrande and log jam put us from dry, well-dressed individuals to sloppy, wet-all-over, kids. seriously, we were wet from top to bottom. its like we went for a swim. and why shouldnt we be? jrf was scooping water while in the log jam and dishing it out at us and when we are in riogrande, we'd break out of our seatbelts so that we can absorb the full fury of the falls.
what really scared me half to death wasnt the space shuttle though, it was the wheel of fate (above). if you look at my picture, i appear calm and relaxed. but if you where there, you'd see my shaking knees and my hard as glue grip on the pedestal. wheel of fate was 10x scarier than space shuttle. i wonder how'd i feel if there was someone else there with me? would i still be scared?
anyway, i hope we go back to ek again, this time with more of the barkada. and this time, with more spare clothes and a towel.
still quite happy though. i just hope she finds who she's looking for. i still trust no one other than myself for the job though. no one. well who am I to decide on the matter? just a silly japanese boy deprived of usual life's graces but still very fortunate. look at me above, im happy, right?
