Random Thoughts

This is the third time I changed my layout style. And guess what, I'm still unsatisfied. I'm running out of choices of templates designed for Serendipity. Sadly, there aren't that many templates available for the few users of Serendipity.

We've also moved our site to a new webhosting plan. It took us a while to figure out that we're still stuck in an antiquated plan where our harddisk space is limited to less than 1 GB, when there are already dozens of webhosting plans out there that offer THOUSANDS of gigabytes. My current blog alone is more than 100 MB. So that made the decision quite easy. Welcome to the terabyte age, baby!

Transferring our site is another matter, though, but it's something that I could delegate to my technical support (read: Baggy). Just wake me up when my blog is up and running again, sweatheart. Thank God for techie hubbies!

Well, back to the blog. I'd like to migrate to Wordpress (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!). But I don't know if it's that easy to move from Serendipity to Wordpress platform. Anybody had any experience doing that?

Baggy says that I may have to move my entries manually (read: one by one!) if I want to preserve my archives. Another option is to just make a new subdomain, then start from scratch using Wordpress. Maybe create something like salamin.bagarinao.com. But what about all the incoming links to my present blog? I would lose them all, of course. But then again, if my Technorati ranking is correct, I'm losing links by the week, anyway. I used to be very keen on getting links before, but I found that somehow it took the fun out of blogging. The heck with blog stats.

Just a word of warning, though. In case this blog becomes temporarily unavailable for a while, it probably means that I'm revamping the site for the better.

Sometime ago, I asked Aya if she knew exactly what kind of work we do. Turned out that she didn't. So I told her: "We're scientists. You know, I do experiments everyday, just like the experiments we do at home. Tatay does stuffs on the computer. We're both hakase." Hakase (??) refers to someone who holds a doctorate. Aya knows this word because she watches Powerpuff Girls on TV, so I thought I'd use the word to give her an idea. In the cartoon series, the girls refer to Prof. Utonium as "hakase."

Aya laughed out loud and said: "Eh? Hakase si Tatay? Ikaw rin? Pano ka naging hakase eh babae ka?" (What? Dad is a PhD? And you too? How could you be one when you're a woman?)

Thanks a lot to the people who created Powerpuff Girls. You've inadvertently given my daughter the erroneous idea that for someone to be called Dr. or hakase, that someone has to be a man. But for now, I'll reserve my rants about gender issues in another blog entry.

I couldn't forget that incident, because it illustrated perfectly how many of our misconceptions could start early on in our lives, no thanks to the crap that we are inevitably fed by the media, friends and families, the very environment we grow up in. The images we see on TV or movies are very powerful in influencing our perception of so many things. (Image taken from www.tv.com)

I was walking back towards our office when I saw a BMW car pass by. I thought, wow, what a really nice car, I wonder who's driving it? Must be one of the guys on the 9th floor (the powers that be, the ones who run this institute). Then I saw the driver. To my surprise, I recognized the person driving the car. It was one of the janitress whom I occasionally see walking around holding a bucketful of stuffs for cleaning.

Another car drove by, not as stunning as the BMW, but it looked fancy just the same. And just as I thought, I recognized the driver to be another janitress who cleans our toilet. Both of them probably just got off from work and were on their way home. I couldn't help but smile to myself. In this country, the people who clean the toilets get to go home earlier than the rest of us schmucks, and they get to drive those fancy cars. Only in Japan.

No, I've not abandoned this blog. Fortunately - or unfortunately - for you, o faithful readers. What have I been up to lately, you ask?

Well, I've also been busy doing a lot of experimenting in my kitchen lately. Here's my futile attempt at recreating the party atmosphere back home. Food, glorious food!

Why, I've been taking my sweet, sweet time savoring the first few weeks of the new year. Got back to Nippon right smack on New Year's Day. Spent the first day of the year cooped up inside a Boeing 747, amidst flight attendants whose glazed eyes betrayed their longing to be elsewhere except on that flight. But perhaps that bodes well for the rest of the year...I mean, traveling on the first day of the year...perhaps this year will be another year of travel for us?

About our trip home? Oh, I couldn't possibly wrap it all up in this blog entry. I won't even attempt to. Too many stories, too much to tell. Too many photos to share...and I'm pretty lazy right now to work on them yet. But if you really want to look at some of our vacation's photos, just check out my Flickr photo album. Dozo! Vacation in the Philippines can be summarized by these words: food, food, and more food! Oh wait, there's also family, heh. Just kidding. Family is topmost on my list, of course.

Here in Japan, the nights are getting longer, the days unbearably colder. We have unearthed our thick coats and jackets for the winter season. It's almost hard for me to believe that the year 2007 is almost over. It seemed only yesterday when we went to Kamogawa to celebrate New Year's Day.

But boy, oh boy, I'm SO excited. We're going home next week. Times like these, I feel grateful that I live in neighboring Japan, because it is relatively easy to go home. It's just a mere 4-hour plane ride to get to Manila from Narita airport. I haven't been home for about two years now. So naturally I'm excited, and not even the news of the recent coup attempt, imposed curfews, and bombings in the Philippines could make me feel any less enthusiastic. Weird huh? But homecoming always gives me a sort of adrenaline rush, you know. As soon as I get off the plane and the familiar sights and sounds assault my senses, I feel that rush.


The rush becomes even more acutely heightened as I bite into my piping hot Jollibee Chickenjoy, dive into my big pile of haluhalo topped with ube, kaong, leche flan and other sinful goodies, shop-till-you-drop in Duty Free Philippines and SM (of course), or simply get myself lost in the mass of humanity rushing into the malls for Christmas shopping.

Moving out is always a painful process, no matter how convenient and easy the moving companies make it out to be. In retrospect, they probably did the easiest part. They only had to lug the big stuffs from Point A to Point B. The new settlers, meaning us, have to do everything else from a) packing, b) unpacking, c) arranging, and d) decorating the place. Well, of course they also have a "plan" where they do everything from a) to d), but it will definitely cost us an arm and a leg.

But oh, what a price to pay. I'm so tired. So dead tired everyday. We haven't even begun with b) yet. So far we've only opened boxes that would allow us to function normally in our day to day lives. I shudder to think of the weeks or even months ahead that we have to spend to make this place decent enough to live in.

I'm doing a lot of ruminating lately. As you could probably tell, from the kind of posts that you are reading in my blog lately. Maybe I'm psyching myself. Maybe I'm having a midlife crisis of sorts.

Or maybe, after such a long time of procrastinating, I am finally beginning to ask serious questions.

I remember, around the same time last year, a reporter from a local newspaper came to interview me at work. He was supposed to write an article which would feature some of the foreigners here in Tsukuba, something on international relations in our community.

He asked me the usual questions - why did I come to Japan, when did I start work, my research, family background, etc., etc.

And then out of the blue, he asked: "Yume wa nan desu ka?" Translated, it means, "What is your dream?"

It caught me by surprise. I had mentally prepared for all the questions I could think of, except for that one question that he popped without warning.

We face many battles in life. Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. It's a fact of life. Winning always brings a feeling of euphoria. Losing, which in reality is more than just an antithesis of winning, can be like an open wound that takes a long time to heal - if it heals at all.

But, as someone said, life goes on. Reluctantly we trudge on, and grin and bear it like everyone else.

Do you fear change in your life, habits, attitude, even the people you live or work with? Or do you embrace change with enthusiasm, eager and hopeful for what's going to happen next?

I will never be the same when I take this path

Change is inevitable. The world around us changes all the time. We change, too, even if we sometimes do not discern it ourselves. Just take a look at your photo taken a year or two ago. You just don't look the same as before. Not just in terms of the extra wrinkly spots or newly sprouted white hairs, but in the way you think, feel, or react to situations. Although the previous year may seem too short, so many of life's events that transpired during that year has changed you into the person you are now.

I see my daughter growing right before my eyes - all five years of her - and I just marvel at how fast she has changed from a helpless infant to a zestful preschooler. How much more different would she be in another five years' time?

When I was in college, I commuted everyday from our house in Tondo to the UP Diliman campus. It usually took me two hours on the road, one way. So that's a total of four hours wasted everyday while waiting for jeepney rides, running after buses, and inhaling the carbon monoxide exhaust from the smoke belchers. Needless to say, even if I had left the house smelling fresh and cool from the morning shower, I would usually arrive in school two hours later all sweaty, smelling of smoke and virtually coated in soot and dust from head to toe. That was my daily routine. I happily endured it, all in the name of education.

During a particularly crowded day, together with several people I rushed towards a jeepney and squeezed myself into an available seat, unmindful of the people around me. I was intent on getting a seat, and that was all that mattered.

As soon as I sat down, to my horror I found that my bag had been unzipped and my wallet was missing. That was the first time that something like that happened to me, and I almost cried out in frustration. I couldn't believe that someone would actually steal from a college student who only wanted to study hard and change the direction of her life for the better.