Recapping 2009 January 2, 2010
Posted by bobbetrevilla in Distant Past, Here and Now, Travels.add a comment
For some the year 2009 was a look back to harsh realities. Let me put it this way, that year had a balanced patches of good-bad, triumphs-tragedies, highs-lows. I can go on and on lest I want to editorialize and write detached from what is concrete and real.
Zooming in on my personal world, 2009 was a year of small things but bigger impacts. I looked out of my lens and see a year ruled by nearby travels and great works.
Baguio remains my favorite place. Been there that year twice. Institutional retreat last January and qualitative-research seminar on May. Both were moments that emerged as opportunities to discover self, friends, and the social world. Baguio is like a refuge that lets you get lost then find “it” again.
Research work brought me to Roxas City mid of this year. It was an entirely new place for us. People were warm, foods were exotic. It was like visiting an episode of our history too. The biggest church bell in Asia could be found in Sta. Monica church which we visited as local tourists. It was nothing but astounding.
My Diliman course this academic year also expanded what could have been a limited view of communication research. I braved weekly night-time travels to finish the course but surfaced from it enriched. I involved my own workplace as a case in research management. This gave me an idea for a bigger research project.
This year marked too my second term as R&DD head of my host agency. I am always overwhelmed by works and responsibilities, getting sick and stressed in the process, but this post makes me feel better beyond the turf. It’s the laboratory for my teaching role.
2010 sees me wrapping up my course work for my second graduate degree. I look forward to reaping personal triumphs, staying happy despite sad realities, and growing better with friends, family, and colleagues (read: coworkers, students, superiors, graduate classmates and mentors).
During our New Year’s eve party, our young folks in the family presented a video clip of what we were and hope to become. I love the term: “survivors.” We all should be.
Christmas comes early on November November 20, 2008
Posted by bobbetrevilla in Angst, Distant Past, Family, Here and Now, Metaphors for Life, Musings, Visuals.2 comments
For some, Christmas is associated to the mushy and melodramatic. It may be true but to most of us Christmas is the most joyful season of the year, and the longest celebration, in fact, for Pinoys. It is the object of sentimental editorials and essays and short stories. Yes, Virginia… Read O Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” and discover that Christmas is about making other people happy.
For a former Canossian like myself, Christmas meant acting out the Nativity during Christmas program or saving enough, to the point of having meager foods during Christmas Party, so we could give to the poor or the sick in the hospitals. That corporal work of mercy would earn us points in the form of putting hand-made poinsentia in a large branch of tree assembled by the good sisters in the school lobby. That early, we were taught that Christmas is being selfless and it could only be meaningful when shared to another.
As a grownup, when I began to earn my own money, Christmas would mean giving cash gifts to kids in the family and tokens to adults including my two sets of parents and other elderlies. Still, it lives to its true meaning of sharing. I couldn’t remember any Christmas done without giving a part of myself to others.
This year, Christmas comes early in the house. God gave me early gifts of a good new work, healthy family members, happiness and comfort shared by friends, and the hope for the future that looms large in the horizon. I couldn’t ask for more.
Tonight I dropped by my fave woodcraft stall and bought a wooden cart, which looks so like a child toy, with some greens of the season sporadically splashed around it. There I put inside it, in the cart, old gold Christmas balls kept from the previous seasons. This reminds of my Christmas as a child when that season was nothing but a genuine act of giving and sharing without expecting anything in return. Best way to look at Christmas is to view it through the naive eyes of a kid. Enough said.
The colors of Christmas are gold, red, and green. On our center table now sits a native basket where lie balls, bells, and abaca angels in gold, red, and green. This is homegrown Christmas at its best. When you’re tired from a whole-day work gearing up and decorating for the season eases the pains. It is the spirit of sharing one’s creativity and flair for colors that works here.
Looks familiar November 8, 2008
Posted by bobbetrevilla in Distant Past, Family, Here and Now, Musings.6 comments
Did it ever happen to you meeting some folks who looked so the same some familiar persons in your life?
I think it happened to me at least thrice.
Once I’ve seen a woman in the Sunday church who resembled the features of my late Nanay. I couldn’t help but cry in my room that day. I couldn’t explain it. Was that reincarnation? A ghost apparition? A coincidence? One of life’s mysteries? Maybe none of these could explain how we become emotional when we see someone who recreates a figure in our lives who is now gone.
One time we were eating in a new fastfood stop outside the campus, we saw someone who looked like my former boss and predecessor in the research department. Did she stay? Didn’t leave at all? Her alter ego? Whatever. That may be fun because the person is still around, alive, somewhere. There our speculative instinct worked.
Just recently, I met in the jeepney on the road home someone who looked so like an old friend. Maybe he was that person. Only he never grew mature. He looked much younger. What could probably explain that again? His younger brother? I don’t know. But as I’ve told once in an earlier blog entry, we get to recognize the real person we know as a character from our past through his|her eyes. Because our eyes do not change across time, or so they say. So no matter how that reincarnated, resurrected, born-anew guy eludes recognition he|she could be identified by a mere look into his|her eyes. He was not that person. I know.
So the next time you meet a person who looks like your parent, former boss, or long-time-no-see friend, think again, take a second look, because with a blink of an eye you’re off to a real re-discovery of your past.
