Canigao Island: A Revisit

I have to post my 2009 summer experience in Canigao Island now before these photos become totally stale (I know, the long overdue is never forgivable!) . I already have 2 posts about the island, but I take the liberty to blog about it again, so you may know about it or to just keep you refreshed.

My early posts:

Canigao Island (Matalom, Leyte)

http://briefstories.blogspot.com/2009/03/brief-stories.html

http://briefstories.blogspot.com/2009/03/canigao-experience.html

Lechon (roasted pig) should be enough for the day.

At the terminal. Where's Joemill? :)

Souvenirs.

Approaching. Views from afar.

Feeling the island!

So you wouldn't get lost, here's the map, but don't wander to the protected area. The lighthouse.

Everything that breathes the island life.

Way back home. Arrived safely. Soaking in the sun all day long was surely fun.

The sun set perfectly.

To Be Aware is To Live

While many paid attention to the call, still more turned a deaf ear.

This day, the 15th of October is Blog Action Day, where bloggers all around the world unite in attacking one issue that is relevant to the global status quo. The world's most pressing concern, at least today, is climate change.

Everyone should be reminded that the worst is gradually showing its might. What happened to the greater part of Luzon, the Philippines recently is a true testament to nature's wrath. Floods, landslides, abnormal average weather, increasing global temperature, glaciers melting, etc. -- these -- are but aftermaths of an environment deteriorating, if not giving up. I am a non-expert on this matter to be honest. Scientists are debating on the real cause/s of climate change.

The simplest I can do, perhaps, is to accept the fact that the world is changing and that climate change is a serious problem. Everyone should care for the world. It just needs some loving. Some can still probably laugh at the thought of human annihilation, the next Atlantis, the next Great Flood, or a typical chaos in a movie, but shrugging the possibility is just insanely a gesture of ignoramuses.

In any way we can, we should help find its cause/s and take radical and immediate action for the environment before the worst nears in our midst. That way, we control climate change and we choose to live better.

Thank You

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people behind the Philippine Blog Awards for the recognition as a national finalist for Best Personal Blog! Being a finalist is more than reason enough why blogging should be part of my lifestyle.

I have been blogging before "blogging" was really even called as such. It was in 2000 (hmm, 4th year high school makes me a bit old). Then officially a Blogspot writer in 2003. Blogging, however, was an on and off activity. Then, in early 2009, came Brief Stories because of a friend's encouragement (I say thanks to you). I'm enjoying it now, and I promise to squeeze blogging in between work (I know) and my affairs with the outside world.

Also, to my readers and to those who voted on Flippish for the Viewer's Choice Award, I have to manage thank-you letters sent to you.

So, this is definitely a good start!

Educate Yourself

When we were still on all fours, the basics for survival were already imprinted in our instincts. Instinctively, we would thirst for food (our mother's milk would keep us nourished), then creep to the nearest side of the crib, clutch our hands to its frame, try to stand up, knees shaking, falter many a time, but, at last,  a lucky strike would come, reduced to on all twos (if there's such an idiom) -- an early memory of a want for knowledge.

The simple life in rural Philippines had me preoccupied with games I was so absorbed with (warp me back to the time before computers and PSP took over). I was always out on the streets playing all sorts of traditional Filipino games and often got some nice scoldings for staying out past 6 PM or after lunch -- on weekends, we had to take a siesta for us to grow (I'd grown accustomed to this reason) but headstrong as we were managed to escape out to elsewhere. Sure I had done lots of running around all my childhood and even had spiders in a matchbox or two groomed for fighting. But this doesn't mean I didn't have time to study. Well, I did -- for the morning homeworks, that is.

Then came the city life, an absolute contrast of the life I left behind. Smart kids would really be smart, they often get ahead, and high school would never be so elementary anymore, very different, a challenging one. When I told you I only studied because of some homework hanging, I shifted gears just to speed up, to catch up. I was up all night for a hard nut to crack in major subjects. High school really changed my attitude towards school and this went on in college.

Dedication and hard work pay dividends. I guess my efforts paid off. Graduation day was overly sweet that I mindlessly drowned myself in total stoppage from too much thinking of academic stuff. I thought I deserved some rest, zero pressure please. I literally stopped educating myself. I just missed my spiders.

But that was short-lived. Having just gained freedom, something dawned on me. I realized people are always on the go, time doesn't stop. Working as a young professional, I knew, would be tough -- so better quit complacency. There's still much to learn, and leafing my old notes does help a lot.

I got to keep on moving. "Learn, learn, learn," were the last words I heard from our manager when I packed my bags up for good.

Image: Cebu City, Philippines

Little Thoughts on Love

The good remains good so long as nothing butchers it, claiming only second best or worse, the worst. Love is a good thing that it deserves a place on the pedestal. But someone can always attest that it is never easy. Love on a journey is one hell of a ride! (speaking on behalf of the millions that chose to love or bumped into someone's heart -- this is beyond cheesiness!).

In relationships, the propensity to be idealistic is but normal. This perhaps started when we were kids when the neighbor of reality was a fairy tale of kings and queens, and of princes and princesses. It was a quest that ended a happy ending -- now, a wishful thinking. If the stars don't align in our favor, we land on the twisted side of the story we hoped and prayed for. Setting a high standard for ourselves only breeds disappointments and desperation, and we would become jaded souls searching for the true meaning of love. Should you be hard and impose a standard on yourself, then make it as conservative as it should be, because you would never learn to love yourself, always trying to prove anything or to meet any standard (bah! as if an expert! ha ha!).

When we love, with it are the capacity to share love and the willingness to be vulnerable. It only gets complicated when it is one-sided -- no reciprocation. Sure it sucks, stinks, that it hurts. The relationship turns sour, better separate ways before the drama explodes into climax. It wouldn't make sense trying to work it out when one already gave up. It takes two to tango.

Well, I can't think of any thing anymore. I feel dried up, squeezing my mind. To be honest, more questions are swirling around my head than just mere thoughts. But these questions are better off unanswered, I guess. Knowing the answers might stink and burn, and that would hurt.