Gabby’s Paradise

I have a diary of sorts that i keep in a filing cabinet in my room. it just like this blog, it contains a lot of my thoughts, although more personal than this one. This is mostly public thoughts - kumbaga may kailangang censorship. MTRCB style. What i have there are my frustrations, my fears, my aspirations and desires. I even have a picture of my desired abs if God just implanted it to my torso.

The diary that I had began when i was 16, a graduating student in high school and I pretty  much knew nothing of the world. Kahit ngayon naman wala pa kong alam sa mundo but back then, all i knew was my school life. I wanted to have a ritual when i wrote, para may konting drama and inspiration - to eat tostillas before i write anything. Those triangular nachos only made its debut for three or four entries and i forgot all about it. Naalatan ako masyado. My entries were mostly about friendship and of a math exam which I was lowest and some stupid nothing about my day, kasama na dun ang mga kainisan ko sa classroom. I had my first idealist thought when i was about to enter college when I promised myself that “I will be just like the oblation, all for country, for the betterment of the world.”  During college, my writings were mostly of jumbled emotions best said by the lyrics of La Vie Bohieme,

To days of inspiration
Playing hookie, making something out of nothing
The need to express
To communicate,
To going against the grain,
Going insane
Going mad

Those were written with so much passion that now that I look back at it, I never thought I felt that way at the time that it happened. Creative ako sa pagsusulat, I remember Ryan Philippe’s character in Cruel Intentions where he had a diary of his excapades and desires and it had drawings and illustrations. Parang artwork na ang lumabas. So that became my inspiration. May mga dinikit ako dung mga pics to get the message across making the writing so much more interesting.

There are also lists that I made in my diary like “10 things i loved abouth
boracay”, “the joys of being single” and the funniest, “30 things I wanna do before i turn 30″  (you wont believe how bogus some of the things that i wrote). Aside from this list, i always have one list that i regularly update - my new year’s resolution. Every year seems to be the same thing, i realize, but remarkably, i actually did my last year’s new year’s resolution.  It had  something to do about fitness, of preparing myself to work (na nasobrahan ata), about interacting with people and being sincere. Mukhang may mga nagawa naman ako.

For this year,  i still dont know what i would like to do for myself. Parang blangko ngayon ang utal ko siguro dahil January 1 pa lang at may pasok na ko sa trabaho bukas but i will have to think about it sooner or later. Its part of my introspective assesment of my year. I would want to keep it hanging for the moment coz i’m sleepy and dumbfounded but i will write it soon enough.

what  do you think should i write for my resolution?

After six months of working in my firm, I embarked on another trip to the Visayas. After going to Nasugbu Batangas, Bay Laguna, Mactan Cebu, Tagaytay, Puerto Galera, and Boracay since April i headed to Panglao Island Bohol last September 25.  It is quite a charming place where relaxation is the only thing that would be in my mind even if i had to go there for official business for the office. The people, even the owner, is pretty laid back. We talk bout business and enjoy the good food prepared and served by Reggie Aspiras, the PDI columnist/celebrity chef/culinary school owner,  who is improving the quality of the resort’s menu (She is one really good chef, makes me wonder why i never pursued to be one).

I was full to my stomach for the two days that i stayed there and I will always remember that rice can be served in a salad - cold and with grapes and that ube can be eaten in a soup, as chips, as part of rice aside from the jam that we frequently eat when we go to Baguio or Laguna. Very satisfying indulgence. I had to go to the gym the next day to burn it all off.

Panglao, as most would describe it is a place very different from boracay. There is a rustic quality to the place that makes you realize that this is a breather that you need, out from the busy riots of manila. It has a soothing feel where you can just lounge around, meditate and think that you are detoxifying. If you are young, energetic and looking for that hot guy or girl for that vacation excapade, better go to boracay because this place is really meant just to relax. I didnt hear any loud music at night nor see a busy avenue along the beach, like what they have in the long stretch of boracay. What i saw was a quiet beach, high tide, with purple jelly fish stranded in the shoreline. A small reclaimed island was near the shore. Darkness engulfed the beach, except for some bollard lights to give some illumination.

Every time I go to some far away place, these are all that i remember: The touch, the smell, the sound, the feeling. For me, it is a sensual experience, I do not think of my plans when i go back to manila and there is no point in doing that when you get out of the metro. I walk a little slower, dream a little bit more and wish for more days of bliss. Those are the things that get me through this hectic life of mine. I have moments when i lose all conscious thoughts and i start to drift into this semi dreamland of hopes and aspirations; where there are no worries, only dreams of a well lived life. Carpe Diem.

Today i celebrate my 21st year of existence. To many, the idea is that today is the symbol
ic opening of the gates of the world. Today, i will be recognized as a free man with choices that will be respected by law and the great majority. I am now an adult -for formalities sake. But devoid of all that debutante celebration,  i am here in front of my computer typing this blog at 1:30 in the morning.

The closest that i got to have a blast at midnight was the countdown of my officemates 10 seconds before the clock turned 12. Yes, surprisingly, at the eve of “my night”, i was still in the office doing some planning and sending an email to Shangrila Mactan for a project which will come to life in November. Not the fanciest of birthday celebrations anyone could ever have. By 12:10, i was walking in ortigas avenue, carefully looking for possible mugglers lurking somewhere in the business district. I got home safely by 1am.

As i was walking in along the half deserted avenue, I began to wonder about the meaning of maturity. When does one really do mature? When was that fateful day  where  there is a shift from innocence and ignorance to  maturity and responsibility.  I gathered my thoughts trying to find out where that fateful instant happened. Unfortunately, I never did find out. The bus to Monumento just passed my way and i had to a step inside. I fell asleep 5 minutes after.

Now that i am all relaxed and a little refreshed after my 40 minute travel, I come to realize that it never really did happen for me. No transition whatsoever. Since i was a kid, the youngest of four siblings, all of whom are only a year apart, I thought to myself that I needed to prove something. MY eldest sister Mela was the responsible one, being the born leader that she was. People were gravitated to her for she exudes that responsible yet caring nature. My second sister Duday was the smart one, she is one hell of a good writer, studious and she knew her craft well. She graduated with honors in UP Los Banos. My brother Pedro was the popular one, his height, charm and good looks earned him the second glances of anyone who has talked to him and taken a glance at him.  As the younger of three talented people, I challenged myself greatly, for always, i saw that unspoken comparison between the four of us. (Maybe I am the only one who feels this way though) Especially to my brother who had the same schooling with me since elementary and high school, i was always “Pedro’s brother”, never did i hear it the other way around.

So as a young boy, I needed to excel and in everything that I did. I put a pressure to myself that developed into this will, this drive for perfection. I saw myself as different from many, where they play childhood games like tumbang preso or chinese garter or whatever, i watched “Star Trek, The Next Generation” with my brother and sisters pondering the morality of deep space exploration or i was training for the volleyball varsity, which you may read unsurprisingly, my brother was also a player.  In my graduation at college, i achieved my dreams, I became a chairperson for a college based organization, I was a cum laude in UP diliman, and I was popular in one way or another.There are many more accomplishments that i have set for myself that is not overshadowed by any of my siblings.

I am a perfectionist, that is crystal but after analyzing the roots of my perfectionist drive, i look back at the years and realize that maybe i deprived myself of my own childhood. I wanted to be mature too soon and wanted to act older than I should. I remember feeling so elated everytime someone would say i act more mature than i really am.

Now that i am working as a project landscape architect in one of the busiest Landscape Architecture firms in the country, I feel that  this need to be more mature is more prominent than ever. You would not imagine my weekly routine. Every week I have to juggle client meetings, an average of three per week, plus site supervision and inspection, design, cad and photoshop.All needs to be squeezed into the office hours of Mon-Fri. I work an average of 12 hours a day plus sometimes i go to the office over the weekends for overspill work, I sleep at 1 am and wake up at 6:30 or 7. That’s my life. Internally I am pressured and  at the same time, externally, i am demanded by clients to do all their whims with the thought that i have to look as if i can handle it all, charmingly and all-knowingly. Of course, these people use their money for big projects. They need responsible people to achieve their dreams. Maturity and responsibility is greatly needed for the job. The pace that i put myself to grow older just got more fast paced.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be less mindful of all the things that worry me. What would it have been like if i never did overexhaust myself in trying to be the best person that i could have been career wise. Would i be much happier and more content of a mediocre but medium paced life or will i be wondering this reverse idea of perfectionism? Its like dreaming what you cannot have.

My only wish for this year of awakening is that i may begin to understand that life need not be too stressful and planned. That i should stop planning and start living because dreams can still happen with sudden awakening, letting things happen in their own time and growing old at the pace nature intended. May this year bring me some piece of mind, some contentment to a soul that is searching for quintisential truths.

In the coming years of my life, let me grow old gracefully, Not rushing, not being left behind.

Happy 21st year, dear self!

A few weeks ago, my brother handed me a poem that he came across lying around our house. It is a beautiful poem that tells us that our lives wont be “Tuck Everlasting” (this is a book i read in HS about immortality). It will surely come to an end and how we spend it is depending on us. There will be  an imprint that we leave behind when we pass away. I would imagine that it would take some time before this really happens but I wonder, what will be my imprint to the world?

I am young and there is still a long way before i fade into oblivion but this poem hopefully will be a reminder for me that success need not be defined by fame, temporal power and wealth. What will reallly matter are the lives that we touched, the people that will feel “a lasting loss when you’re gone”.

Hopefully, this blog is an extension of my existence and my imprint to the world. That i didnt go by without making my presence known and my life had a meaning. In my best wishes, you who read this blog will see that i am not just an unknown face or “that guy with the video”, i am that man who wants to make that imprint, who wants to  declare his  existence and who wants to unvail his purpose - whatever that would be.

I may look back 20 years from now (or is there still internet at that time, surely something will come up to revolutionize it again) I will rediscover this poem, this dream of having a life that matters and evaluate, “Did my life really matter?” Hopefully it will.

A Life That Matters

Ready or not,
someday it will come to an end.
There will be
no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the
things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten will pass to someone else.
Your wealth,
fame and temporal power shall shrivel to irrelevance.
Your grudges,
resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your
hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and
losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won’t matter
where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived at the end.
It won’t
matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your
gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will
matter? How will the value of your days be measured?
What will
matter is not what you bought, but what you built;
Not what you
got, but what you gave.
What will
matter is not your success, but your significance.
What will
matter is not what you learned, but with what you taught.

What will
matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice
that enriched, empowered or encouraged
others to emulate your example.
What will
matter is not your competence, but your character.
What will
matter is not how many people you knew
but how
many will feel a lasting loss were loss when you’re gone.
What will
matter is how long you will be remembered by whom and for what.

Living a life
that maters doest happen by accident.
It’s not a matter
of circumstance but choice.
Choose to live
a life that matters.

Author Unknown

in the aftermath of a great tragedy, i come to think of what has happened to my past year. it has been a ride of a lifetime where i have felt the intensity of every known emotion related to the elated state of love. happiness, sadness, frustration, depression, erotism, etc.

noticeably, when we are in the state of eros, we develop a keener sensitivity to our surroundings and ever good act is magnified to divine kilig moments and every bad act is magnified to personal sabotage but as we move on and we get to look back at the things that we did, it becomes aparent that we were just pathetic fools under the cupid’s spell.

i will never really know what went on in your head - if it was all true or was it just me thinking that it was but maybe it doesn’t really matter anyway, it was our moment and it is ours for the keeping. someday when i have digested the essence of what transpired, i will sigh and say to myself that it was nice while it lasted. love is never lost as they say. it is perennial as the grass.

this blog and two more that i saved in my draft but never did publish is my tribute to your existence. You are part of my life written here in cyberspace and your essence will be left in my heart. our lives will be forever connected by an invisible string, seemingly invisible but forever strong. Our dreams, our aspirations and our moments will never be lost in the pages of the grand master plan and if  you ever come back in the most unexpected way, you will still bring a smile to my face. You have been my meaning. I need to declare that to the world.

Palangga ko, please do take care of yourself. Gimingaw na ku nimo.

i had a nice time at my “vacation” at Boracay and Puerto Galera. Here are things that I discovered in my stay in these beaches:

BORACAY SHORES

1. the sand is really as white and as fine as they describe it. the beach is crystal clear the    landscape is picturesque. the most fantastic thing happened to me there, two fishes in the beach were playing with me as if they were not scared that i could smash them. i even touched their tails.

2. the people are  beautiful, (ok… not all but a lot)  maybe because everyone expects everyone else should look hot so they enter this bandwagon.everyone wears board shorts for guys and bikinis for girls. shades are a must. sosyalera girls are always around and foreigners abound.

3. everything is more expensive in boracay. i bought a pair of shorts in boracay worth P250 but got it for P 189 because of charming the salesladies but as i later found out when i went to puerto galera, that same pair only costs P120. talk about rip off.

4. it is only here that you will see a gorgeous gal, almost naked and walking in the side streets as if she wore pambahay and strutting her stuff as if no one sees her hot bod. in bora, you can get away with anything. good thing she’s hot. if she were some grotesque creature, it would have been a nightmare.

5. the best thing about all that happened is that its all for free. rest and recreation with pay really makes me say, “whew, this is the life!” If i spent for all the things that i did, it would be equivalent to 3 months for a manual laborer.

funny, my firm might go there again in the next few months for another company outing. it seems my boss has a lot of money to spare to make us a bit more comfortable. of course, not all the expenses will come from his own pocket though. clients and contractors are the ones who actually pay for it. hehehe. The next time i go there, i will be more prepared: i will bring the damn Digicam. (my boss psychologically wanted me to suffer the time i went there. he retrieved the company camera at the last moment he was about to leave. such a spoiler.)

this is getting too long and too tiring even for me to write ( i’ve saved this three times now before i actually published it and the moment totally has passed.) puerto galera stories just have to be written on another day with a different mood perhaps. although, to compare the two, i enjoyed my time more in puerto galera because we did a lot of things there and i had my whole bunch of officemates with me to explore and experience. boracay is a nice place but because i was alone and workinig in the morning, i didnt fully enjoy it. the scene was good and the projected enjoyment was immense but vacations need to be spent with somebody. it becomes meaningless without anyone to talk to and relate your experience.

yesterday was the memorable event that ended my life as a student. dearly beloved, i finally graduated. my college years went by in a blink of an eye as if the four years of my life was just a half a second of bliss. gone gone gone.  yesterday, as UP president erlinda roman was finally saying her magic words and we were all ready to shift our sablays (the UP counterpart of the toga) from right to left to signify the end of our academic pursuits, i was filled with a euphoric state of mind. as i told my friend that day who asked what i felt, “it was ecstatic, orgasmic, it was fuckin hot”  yes my friends, i would have come all over if i just didnt have my barong tagalog and my dress pants on.

the feeling that i had was really nice, all the graduates who waited for hours in the afternoon sun felt the same way. who cared about jobs and being jobless and the money that we will spend after. the moment was ours and we just shouted, clapped our hands and breathed our sighs of relief. it is finally over. though in my heart, as you all know, i did not want it to end but you know what, it really had to be that way and im happy that i am now exploring the higher pursuits of my profession of landscape architecture.

it was a moment to remember. many of my friends and family congratulated me the past few weeks up to the day of graduation and there has been a sense of pride. some sort of yabang that i can say that i graduated as one of the select few who survived the rigors of UP life because not everyone is given that chance, let alone finish it.

the day of graduation i was also given a promise, a new light to one of my on going dilemmas. it is not much though but certainly, it was good. may that promise be fully realized and everyday i wait for its completion.

my graduation perhaps has been one of my happiest moments. it is the culmination of my efforts, the end of my predictable future because after that day i take my own steps without the guide of an educational ladder of freshman to sophomore to junior and senior. after graduation, i can leap or go slowly depending on opportunities and avenues for growth. it is much more difficult now to chart my success. there may never be another graduation where thousands gather to see me be given a medal and i take my bow. now it all depends on me on how i will master my fate and maneuver my life.

congratulations to all graduates! our whole life awaits.

It seems that my company is having a company outing this coming may and everyone is asking everybody else who they would bring. As for me, i still am undecided. You see, i’m the new guy in the office. Was just hired at the end of March. I’m not the type who would be very super close to people i barely know but i make it a daily effort to get to know everyone one at a time. a slow but sure way to gain friends. They barely know me here I see. They do not see that i observe them often, feeling the atmosphere of the office and seeing who’s who and all the intricate details that needs to be known. I am no ghost here but not that visible either. I like it that way for now.

The outing is so much like a silent pressure for me to define myself. Yes, it is my time to shine. The men and women would wanna see what i am made of. So i now see that i must choose wisely - very Obsessive compulisive. In a workplace where image is important and clients see you and your officemates too as how you project yourself, one must really be cautious. Paranoia, it may seem, but i cant help but think about it.

Three days ago, i started working in this firm. No excitement from my part was felt, just a sense an internal revolution happened, as if i am catapulted into a pit of responsibility and migraine. Viewers, be forewarned: I  am not saying that i don’t like my job, what i’m  saying here is that i feel so much burden here being in a phase of uncertainty and heavy responsibility. I’m not used to it, I guess. My fun times are over, i presume. Life  will be different, i imagine.

Back when i was in college, (and that was merely a week ago but there is no other way to address the whole experience),  I can stroll in the shaded avenue of the University, looking up to the canopy without even caring what time it is or what will be my next thing to do. I can jog in the late afternoons and still have the time to  have some gimmicks, call some friends or watch tv. I can go on sleepovers even on tuesdays - drinking and having fun with friends til the wee hours of the night. Life was so much fun and carefree.

I miss those times (yet it is just three days ago that it ended) and no matter what i do, i cant turn back the tides and say to myself that its MY way of life. Sooner or later, i will come to this moment where i am right now: WORKING.

THE  NEXT DAY
ok, i’m gradually changing my mind. it seems that the paycheck can actually change a bit of your perception. i received my 3 days salary yesterday. it isn’t a lot i tell you but the fact that i was the one who worked for it made me realize that this really is real life. After college, the only way to go is work. it is like a natural course of action for the modern world. in the next few months, and years even, i will plot my world (how architectural) in this office and wherever else my creativity would take me. for now, it is a slow realization that the fun days are over yet maybe, i will also have a new kind of fun here. life just moves on.

Yesterday my thesis deliberation just ended. after two semesters of agonizing research and design, im finally in the final stretch of my thesis, i just need to finish the thesis book and  some revisions to the design and its over. its weird you know, after being in my daily thoughts for quite some time, im finally letting it go. happy at the same time sad but i guess all experiences are like that. when we really put our best to a thing that we do and it finally concludes, we end up missing the pain and agony it brought us. some sadistic idea perhaps.

all the same, as one article in Youngblood wrote, it is nice to bask in the glory of college but we must realize that in the  end we must move on to greater things - new challenges, new experiences.

im saying thanks to everyone who noticed my blog and for thinking about it for a second. at least, im not the only one who knew what was going through my head.

in two to three months time, i will no longer be a student. after almost 15 years of my known life, all i did was to study, a routine of waking up in the morning and going to school but that phase will be over soon.

im ready to move on to greater things.