EJ Padero dot Com: Volume 1

Another thing to be thankful for last month was that I finally got to replace my 4-year-old Giant 15″ CRT monitor with a spankin’ brand new AOC 19″ 193FW LCD monitor for my rig.

Check it out after the jump.

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All sorts and variations of which have been available at your favorite fake/cheap-selling tiangge (flea market) since 2003-2004. Who has never owned or wore one? I took the photo below before I gave some away because they had gotten too tight for me, especially around the belly. Haha!

Superman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern
Thundercats, Cobra Commander, Captain America

I forgot to include my Astro Boy and Venom t-shirts in the photo.

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It’s one of the house specialties slash novelty dishes of a place named Green Ats in Tagaytay.

Upon seeing the sign and after verifying that it really did say “Hot Sizzling Buko”, my culinary curiosity got started. I wondered about things like, “Will it taste like chicken?”, and “Will I be able to stomach it?”, or “The toilet isn’t very fancy. Maybe I should have some Imodium ready before I try it.”

Unfortunately, the sizzling buko wasn’t available the first time I was at Green Ats. Even the waiter, who was new, admitted he didn’t know what it looked nor tasted like. It then became a reason to return, which I was able to do last night.

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While driving alone on EDSA at 6 A.M. on a Sunday morning, I thought it might be safe enough to save a little on gas by just cruising along at 60 to 80 Km/H with the airconditioner shut off and the windows down. Every Toyota Revo owner/driver knows what a gas guzzler the vehicle is, moreso an AT 2.0L (gas) VX200. You’d be lucky (or skillful enough of a driver) to get 6 to 7 Km/L out of one when driving within the metro.

So there I was, enjoying very light traffic on the highway. For natives of Metro Manila, that is already quite a treat. Then, just like how scum collects at slow points in a river, commuter buses with their crazy, ignorant, drug addict drivers started to grow in number beginning at SM Megamall in Ortigas to Cubao and Kamias-Kamuning (and most definitely at TriNoMa and SM North, if I did have to go up until there). That was it, sweet and very short.

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To achieve this, I think it may not be enough to forgive. We must also forget, because it is in remembering what has passed that we end up being sad. Sad because we cannot avoid feeling the pain again – or sad because whatever happiness we had will remain in the past and cannot be recycled.

Does man become sad because he has memory?

Pablo Neruda, in his “Tonight I can write” (the saddest lines), captures this as, “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

Paulo Coelho’s “Closing Cycles” goes into more detail, and just as beautifully.

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

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