Salted Peanuts

She couldn't have been any younger than 50. She had this black lace, littered with golden glitters that kept her hair up in a ponytail. Her forehead was oily, and her cheeks as well. She seemed tired. Her eyes seemingly wary, mostly tired and a bit reddish. Between seconds, she reaches for a bag of Sugo salted peanuts. She was carefully munching the nuts, ever cautious to part her lips in every munch. I could see that she kept munching the nuts with her left set of molars. She probably have lost her right set of molars, seeing that she's in her fifty's. She was sitting in a stooped position, almost unintentionally. She just wiped her right hand on her pants, the right pair to be exact, right on her thigh. She was wearing a pair of black corduroy pants. The side of each pair open, about 2 inches in width, knitted in designs of "x". It was annoying, her wiping in her pants every 4 or so nuts. With her right ring finger, she scratched the bridge of her nose. Her nails must have not been manicured for a year. She then reached for the bag of nuts again. She wasn't wearing any ring, I noticed. Either she's allergic to rings or she's a spinster, but hopefully not the mean type. She seems to be a nice lady. She's wearing a pair of golden earrings.
A screaming siren shook me and made me stop staring at her. It came from a speeding PNP car that had "Bomb Squad" written on its side. I figured, probably there was a bomb threat in Guiwan. That's where the car was heading in a flash. Then I noticed that we were following an old Volkswagen beetle. It's plate read "LAW 241." I'll be honest, I am not sure with the digits that came after the letters. His plate read LAW. That was what caught my attention. It made me think, what's the use of having laws when bomb scares and bomb explosions seem to be routines in our place?
What are laws if they cannot deter would-be criminals and terrorists? What are laws when law enforcers become the criminals and the terrorists?
Cicero once said and lectured that "The good of the people is the chief law." What does it mean when one says people that are good, anyway? Before I become the philosophical fish that I sometimes am, I just have to look at the hungry Filipinos who are running out of patience, running out of time, running out of options.
She reached for her bag of nuts, again, not minding the bomb squad that just crossed our way. I wonder if she even heard the siren. She kept munching, wiping her right hand on her right thigh, reaching for the bag of nuts and munch again.
That's my stop. I signaled the driver, stood up before he slowed down and stepped on the breaks. That's when I noticed she was wearing a pair of black leather shoes. The kind that high school teenagers wear as part of their uniform ensemble.
Oh joy! There were no pedicabs in sight. I didn't want to walk one-hundred fifty meters to our house. I was really exhausted. I came from the grandstand where I jogged almost six rounds. I was with Jerome, Romeo and Paulo. We headed for the boulevard afterwards, ate balot (I had two), tempura and downed a 12-ounce bottle of mountain dew.
There was nothing at that moment I wanted to do more than just lie down on my bed and get a power nap before I hit the showers.
Bent on not having that walk, I waited. Ten minutes have passed but still no pedicabs in sight. Pissed off, I started walking when someone called out my attention. The Lord is so magnanimous. A pedicab!
I reached our house still thinking of the bag of Sugo salted peanuts. I completely forgot the lady's oily face.

It's over, almost

The summer classes are over. This means that I no longer have to wake up very early in the morning. I had a 7:30 this summer. That's a reeelief! I still have to give a final exam on Tuesday though .
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrh!
A brownout just cut my Caspian Prince download! And I can't seem to resume it! Waaah!
Where was I? Oh, the final exam I have to give on Tuesday.
I'll be attending a seminar on Photo Editing and Desktop Publishing the whole next week, all the five working days. Then there's the group of students I am training for the ACM Programming Contest and the Smart Sweep Contest. They are a bunch of brilliant students. Not the geek kind. But a bunch who knows how turn every algorithmic nightmare into one helluva party.
We have to finish two applications (card games) in time for the orientation seminar for the Freshies. We are experiencing a dwindling enrollment in our Computer Science and Management Information System programs. We need to work on this one, hard.
Just when I thought that I was free of the 7:30, it was jaw-dropping when I saw my schedule for the first semester. Monday - Friday, 7:30 am!
You see, I have a problem with this schedule. I teach Computer Science subjects. I handle both the elementary and advanced programming subjects, data structures, and the design and analysis of algorithms. The 7:30s I will have this first semester are both advanced programming. I need an LCD projector for this class. And offices open at 8:00 am. Yes, we do not have our own LCD projectors in our department. So we depend on the Computer Center and our College. Like I said, their offices open at 8:00 and they don't allow us to borrow the projector late in the afternoon the day before. The projectors can't stay in our office overnight. But I will try to work out this one.
When all this work is done, I am so going to the beach and bask under the sun's deadly rays! I will conquer Malamawi!

On Giving

I have never considered my work, work, 'til this day. I am tired. Until this day, I never had difficulty waking up early in the morning. When everyone is enjoying their summer, trying to catch up on the sleep they have missed out, I am cheerfully waking up early, dawn after dawn. I've always considered the new morn a blessing and a chance to help one more soul, one more person who needs help. My philosophy has always been that help is always around, all one has to do is ask. So, as long as I can give the help, i'll give it, with cheerful mood.
Sometimes, life can be cruel. But I take it. I take with a big heart. Bring it on bitches! I may be ridiculed, I may be cautioned but I'll never be stopped. Oddly so, I feel tired. Stressed out. Life is indeed a box full of chocolates. You never know what you will get. But it no longer matters. It must never matter. But that's until today.
I feel the urge to no longer give a damn, not one bit. Bahala na, the famous Filipino saying goes. I wanna be free.
But what does this mean? Giving up on the one thing I so believe in? I am not asking for anything grand, anything in silver and gold.
All I am asking is we all enjoy the sunset for the sunset that it is. The full moon that it is, sans embellishments, just the full moon hanging in the dark blue sky.
It is futile. Futile to try to please everyone. That is true. But that won't stop me from trying.
This world will never be the world that we want this to be. Never. I don't have to tell you why.
Because we don't wallow in the why, we move on. We no longer search for answers, we become the answers.
We may fail others, but knowing that we try our damn best, all we could ever say is, it sucks to be them.
I know I should not have said those words. But that's the whole point of it all. We say what we need to say and never regret it. Because at that instant, that's what I wanted to say, that's what I needed to say.
I guess, what's left to say is this.
Do what you think is right. But the moment you mess with my brown ass, your dark butt crack might just be the only thing that will be served to you every morning, every noon and every night!
That was uncalled for. But like I said, that's what I needed to say at that moment. And nothing, I mean nothing, would have changed that.
Now that that is out of my system, I'll be ok. I am ok. I am good! Ready to take on the world and I have never felt better!

Busy

Busy? I am. I've got loads of things that I have to do. I usually know that I am becoming a slave to my work when I suddenly chance upon one of my hard bound books on my table untouched for weeks already. Like the one I started reading last January, Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune. I don't know if you read her but she's the author of the House of Spirits.
Daughter of Fortune is about Eliza Sommers, orphaned at birth. She is to fall in love with Joaquin, a lowly clerk as described by the summary. And she gets pregnant by Joaquin who decides to go work in San Francisco (they are from Chile). She follows him.
The novel starts with "Everyone is born with some special talent, and Eliza Sommers discovered early on that she had two: a good sense of smell and a good memory."
Of course, I still can't tell you what happens to Eliza in San Francisco. How she even decided to go there. How she met and fell in love with Joaquin. I am curious though if Isabel describes in one of the chapters in the novel a love scene. I envy writers who could vividly describe such scenes, you would think it's their scene they are engraving!
The book cover has a picture of a woman with short, boyish bobbed hair and a sharp look. Looking straight at me. She wears a pair of earrings with only the left in sight. She has her left arm angled at her waist. She wears a black long sleeved dress with lace patterns at each end of the sleeves. Embracing her neck is a pattern laced as well. And a golden pendant secures this lace in place. Her brows are trimmed. She just looks straight at me, as if asking intently and with urgency, when I will finish the book.
It's May now, and I still am at the book's first chapter.
I miss those days when I almost had all the time to read. I even remember bringing a book and reading it on a jeepney ride to work. But of late, time has been so elusive. And to think that I am only an instructor at a local university (read: UNDERPAID).
Once I get the chance, I'll devour every book I have yet to read! And I have over twenty in my shelf! Everytime I chance upon a book worth my while, I buy it, even if I don't have the time to read it yet. I encourage you to do the same.
Reading is bliss (when you are not busy).