Love in the Time of Cholera

Do you remember this?

I knew there's a novel and a movie for this.  Randomly, I was searching for a flick or a movie and I picked this one.  It's about time that I just stop hearing about it.  But at the back of mind, the title has a ring to it but I can't remember what it is.  So I watched it and at first it looked cute but at the half part of it, Florentino, the love interest of Fermina, stopped being handsome and cute.  He became Javier Bardem who looked hotter in the pic I googled just now than he was in the movie.  In the movie, he looked like the guy who does not take a bath!

Young Florentino

Older Florentino

Anyway, the love story was eternal.

Still, something remains unsolved in my mind.  And then while I was taking a shower, I thought of Florentino and the availability of shower in his place, I suddenly remembered!

Serendipity!  Yes, the movie.  The book "Love in the Time of Cholera" was the book where Sara (Kate Beckinsale) wrote her number and sold to a bookstore in her quest for love, fate and destiny.

That's it.

Solved.

Now I'm going to see Serendipity again..


*Google images

The cool breeze whispers Christmas

The Christmas spirit casts its spell yet again.. This is all-time favorite christmas song of mine..

The white Christmas I only see in the movies, the pine tree we used to decorate in high school from all kinds of crap, the slowly receding number of gifts I get as I grow older, and especially the many people, near or far, who I call my loved ones and friends, is Christmas..

2 Things Today

Yesterday, I was chatting with my best friend.  It was rather short, but we did miss each other.  I was giggling and holding on to every word that pops up from her.  It was the thought that she too was in the same mode on the other side that made me act like some silly school girl.  My hubby sitting beside me had to implore.  Well, I said, it’s Bez.  And he knew right away!

I and my best friend could laugh the whole day like there’s no tomorrow.  That’s what I love being with her.  No one could make me act as crazy and not care at all.  And the reason why we laugh? Most of the time..nothing.  Our eyes would just meet, one forms a smirk on the lips and the other would already burst into a laugh.  And the other follows like the smirk was some sneeze with light-speed contagion.  

Sometimes we have to hold back because other people around might think we are laughing at them, and most of the case, we’re really not.  But yes, we can break into craziness over a bald hair, the mismatched outfit, the broken teeth.  There's no pun, zero rudeness.  It's just us being us, without going overboard.  We could just share the most mundane thing and make it grand by seeing fun in it.  Yuck and drool at the same time, ah we could do that! 

But our usual laughing trip, it’s like no other and it’s priceless!  

Second today..

I've read in the paper today: Construction of the expiatory church of La Sagrada Familia in Spain began on March 19, 1882, and continues to this day. It is expected to be completed in 2026.

Wow, right?! Still being constructed and yet it already stands as beautiful as it is.  Before mister baby's passport expires, I hope we could step in the church and hear the mass.  And that's after we have taken a lovely family photo outside. Whew, this is yet the dreaming me..

Happy weekend all!

Since our news still does not seem to get over it..

I might just as well share these thoughts I've written in my incognito blog/diary.  


One month has passed since the Manila hostage crisis.  Yes, that incident.  It was shameful as it was but it does not make everyone in my country less as they are.  

Anyway I have written these in the height of the blame game that quickly brewed up right after the tragic ending. I guess, it was so necessary.  It was painful enough so each one needed someone, anyone to blame.  So here I went:

To whom it may concern:


And now everybody is playing the blame game.

Let’s blame the hostage taker.  He’s totally out of his mind to have used people’s lives to get what he wanted.  There was just no justification to his wrongdoing.  Nothing.

Let’s blame the SWAT or those uniformed men we saw right there.  We are just stating the obvious here.  Let’s not beat around the bush and say that it was handled rather how it was supposed to be.  I am a saying this, claiming no knowledge whatsoever of what and what could not have been done.  But let’s face it, it was their job, their task to handle such a situation.  It would be absurd to say that they had nothing to do with the terrible ending of the crisis, or that they did their best when we all saw that there was so much better judgment and action on their part wanting.  Let’s just put it this way, we have teachers to teach, housemaids to help in our households and doctors to help the sick.  It was their job to take on such a situation and they failed.  They failed so badly.

Let’s blame the media.   They were so lost in the big scoop unfolding in front of them, they forgot to take some cautious effort or better judgment.  They forgot that that the blow by blow account of what was happening might be seen by the hostage taker and it might just blow it.  And it did.

Let’s blame the onlookers.   But at a latter thought, no, they had to be there. They just could not miss a thing.  What if the police might need some assistance?  Like an errand to get a high chair so that SWAT could climb up the windows, or, get an extra maso since it seemed that the officers  would always lose hold of them. Probably it was too heavy to handle, so an errand could get a lighter one.  They were just indispensable and I gather, the police thought so too, because they were allowed to be there the whole time. 

Let’s blame the commanders, those people who were supposed to do the brainwork, those who could see the situation with their special skills, those armed with studies on hostage stuff, those who could better see it at a perspective and those who knew at what time and how soon the problem should end.  We didn’t have a totally deranged man.  We saw it.  He tried to negotiate.  But no, the brainwork people, I thought, knew better.  So it had to take 12 distressing hours.  And it had to end tragically.

Let’s blame the Ombudsman.  I do not know much about our laws.  Neither do I have a complete grasp of how an erring government official should be penalized or not.  But how could one give such a negative letter to someone desperate and  disturbed enough to hold people’s lives in exchange of a letter with a happy note.  Oh, I forgot we have rules to follow and everything has to go through a process.  So he should wait. Right!

Let’s blame the president.  He was in a closed-door meeting.  And the door was so tight-locked and the meeting was so important that the lives waiting to be taken at any time, and the international relations on the verge of a slit-throat had to wait.

But everyone now seem to claim that they have played their cards right. 

So do we blame now the HK tourists? Let’s see.

They should have not ridden that bus and roamed around our country, for who knows a policeman who has sentiments against the government might hostage them. 

Or the driver?  He could not have driven that bus and took the job of touring the HK nationals.  He shouldn’t have been a driver in the first place! 

Or the airport? It could not have allowed these people to enter the country for who knows there might be a police officer who might kidnap and take them as hostages. 

Or, the Quirino Grandstand should not have been constructed!

Obviously this is a sarcasm-stricken post.  You see, there is just no point for a blame game.  Everything is done now.  What it takes is somebody, some people, standing up and saying, there was something wrong in there and that has to be corrected. But that shouldn’t end there.  We CANNOT just choose to do or not to do or even neglect to do something which is called upon us and say that no one wanted it to happen, especially after loss of lives regardless of nationality or race.  Somebody, some people have to take responsibility. -JDMO

So there.  Now things are getting pretty well or maybe not.  But surely people may start standing up and recognize their shortcomings.  The President has started doing that.  And I guess, it's just fair that we give everyone a chance.  In the first place, I believe, deep inside my Filipino heart, that NO ONE wanted it to end that way.

The Big Word Bourgeoisie

I went to a state university and I’m more than glad that I did.

The university I went to did not teach me anything of theory that I can particularly remember right now. Instead I learned some basic life instincts.

The separation from my family taught me to be independent.

I learned that street smart does not only mean looking smart in the streets.  It means holding your bag firmly and not making unnecessary attention towards any of your valuables.

I learned that the odds were not so far when at the very corner of the National Bureau of Investigation office, a mugging succeeded in stark daylight.  A man was dead, the police wounded.

I rallied on the streets.  And though sometimes, I could feel my heart pounding for the advocacy of the protest leaders, most of the time I joined because I wanted to miss classes too.  It was a worthy excuse.

I went with the flock of people with bands tied around their heads and streamers and fists raised in the air. I walked under the searing heat and shared their sweats.  But I taxied on my way back home.  I learned that life can be easy like that after some self-imposed hardships.

I haggled for my education.  Unnecessary, but I did.  I told them I was fatherless, left at a very young age, and so on and so forth. I wrote them every month so that they would not dare take me out of that LIST that seemed to  be the lifeline of my education.  So I learned that education is a right, not a privilege.  But I see that it does not seem so.

  

During this process, I learned that there are some seemingly monsters who queerly sat for  government positions but obviously hated it.  And I see that until now they still exist and probably will forever.

But there are those who seem  to be the light of day.  That woman, her face still etched in my mind, and her smile could only afford so much to appease me when my papers and tuition just won't fit.

 

I learned of the inverted triangle that my professor had so much pleasure of teaching, that if it were a song I’d be LSS-ing on it until now.  He spoke of the socialists, those great minds behind it and my pea-sized brain could only take so much serving. My thoughts now: it is absurd and hypocrisy that it’d be ever possible these times.

So ask me now, what are the principles of international law.  I could only give a vague answer in between stutters and my bleeding brains.  Ask me about the wars and I would answer, Go ask the marines.  

For my faint memory of the world’s dates and whats had long been taken away by my own qualms.  They will linger in the air, but not anymore for my grasp.  

Or maybe still, but only the air could tell.

In college, I wrote about the French Revolution.  But ask me now, I shall tell you, Google it!

*googled image