Category Archives: Me, Myself & I

Pekyaw

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So the Gods, the odds and karma are again in favor of Manny Paquiao.  His win today against the bigger Antonio Margarito only confirms that Paquiao is the greatest boxer in modern history.  Every time Pacquiao wins a boxing fight, I am always so impressed by how the heavens answer the intense prayers of Nanay Dionisia (his mother).  Also, every time Pacquiao wins a fight, I always remember my first ever encounter with this boxing hero.

It was more than a decade ago when I was still working as the Head of HR in 3-star Royal Palm Hotel (now Lotus Garden Hotel) located in Ermita, Manila.   Pacquiao then was a budding boxing athlete who could hardly speak the English language and was worth less than a million pesos.  He was not yet popular then.  Even the boxing ring announcers during that time could hardly pronounce his name.  He is either introduced as “Pakyeyiyow” or “Pekyaw”

Pacquiao during that year was due to have a boxing fight in Manila with Mexican Gabriel Mira and no five-star hotel (I suppose) agreed to sponsor both fighters’ hotel room so the organizers settled with ours.  Both Pacquiao’s and Mira’s team were billeted in our hotel.

I remember the owner of the hotel instructed me, Mr. Sal Magugat the Resident Manager and Mr. Oca Bangayan the Head of the Security to ensure that Pacquiao be given the most comfortable room.  On the other hand, she further ordered that Mira be assigned in a crib where the noisiest air conditioning unit is situated or in a chamber located on the street-side of the hotel where the earsplitting engines and honking of public utility vehicles (like jeepneys and taxi cabs) can be heard inside the room.  That’s just precisely what we did.

The following day, it was in all broadcast media that Manny Pacquiao retained his WBC Flyweight World Title and was tagged as boxer with the greatest potential to be the next boxing hero of the Philippines.  Let me clarify that Pacquiao did not cheat it’s just that his opponent was puyat (without sleep).

Isang sikretong pati si Pekyaw di alam…

Cobre Cama

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After an epoch and a half, I suddenly felt the urge to change my bed sheets.  While tucking the seams of the sheets, like a virus awakened from hibernation in the deepest recess of my cranial cavity, I suddenly realized that almost all mothers in the Philippines changed the bed sheets of their kids last November 2.

This is attributed to the Pinoy belief that kids who play with fire like a lighted candle will end up suffering from nocturnal enuresis (peeing on bed while deeply asleep).  Trooping and spending a considerable amount of time at the cemetery is no fun if you as kid is not permitted to collect thawing wax and form it into a ball from the melting lighted candles that were lit on the tombs of the departed loved ones every November 1.  In the Philippines every November 1 at the cemetery, a kid’s coolness and savvy-ness is measured by the size of the collected ball of wax.

Though there is no scientific and empirical study on how playing with fire is directly connected to a child’s urinary bladder, let me impose my own particular explanation.  Kids during the Day of the Dead (November 1) are so engrossed in waiting for the lighted candles to melt for them to collect the liquefying wax.  Kids would not have the time and opportunity to go to a lavatory for them to release their excess in bodily fluid.  They would not want to lose the opportunity to collect the melted wax since another kid (a cousin, a sibling or a kid from an adjacent or nearby tomb) may also be eyeing to collect these melting wax from lighted candles.  Also, kids would not want to pee, do something else or walk away from the lighted candles since a melted wax easily solidifies and would be difficult to bend and glue-in into the increasing ball of wax.

With this rationalization, we can therefore conclude that there is a direct mutuality between the diameters of the collected ball of wax and that of the child’s urinary bladder.  The bigger the collected ball of wax results to bigger bloated urinary bladder.  This ends up to bed wetting which in turn also results to their mother’s changing of Cobre Cama (bed sheet) early in the morning the following day.

Susmaryosep! Nagpalit lang ng kobre kama, ang dami ng sinabi. Hmp!

From Madocian to Mighty Titan

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Yesterday I received an e-mail from a certain Catherine Aquino attaching the official statement of Manila Doctors College’s name change.  It indicates that the school will now be named Manila Tytana Colleges – naming the school after the mother of its Chairman.

I respect the MDC management’s decision in its name change but I being a simple alumnus of MDC (and other Madocians for sure) are definitely saddened about this development.  This prompted me to wear an all-black-clothing today for me to personally observe the death of the name of a school I learned to love, value, honor and adore.

A couple of months ago, I even wrote a foolish and ridiculous write-up about this issue in this blog when rumors reached me with the hopes that this little-tattle is not true.  Consider this as my initial reaction of “in denial” and “anger” stages of grief.   (please click “here” if you wish to check it out)

Well I guess, any effort to reverse MDC management’s decision may be too late already and I should learn to accept the fact that the internationally renowned name Manila Doctors College will soon be blasted into smithereens.

With its new name, there will be a lot of compelling and necessary adjustments, modifications and transformations that the former MDC’s present management will have to do which I would not want to enumerate here in this write-up.  It’s their job, so let them do it!

Being part of the corporate world for more than 15 years, I would like to believe that “change” is one inevitable reality that people should accept so as to adapt to the ever changes in the corporate world.  “Change” makes businesses to move forward, further its security, be more adaptable, and of course be more financially sound.  I’d rather change the name of the business institution and move forward instead of restraining its capacity to expand due to the limitations of the institution’s name and end up losing and closing it down.  Therefore, I’d rather change the name of Madocs to something else for it to grow further rather than limiting its capacity to swell or totally kill it.

Another thing that will be definite, “Madocians” death will give rise to the “Mighty Titans”.  I am a former “Madocian” but a newborn “Mighty Titan”.  I respect the opinions and sentiments of all Madocians.  I hope you respect mine…

Sabi nga ni manong Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, “Hi hu mubs nat porward, gows bakward”.  Pis…

Clarifying Oilyness

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Dry skin is a sign of aging.  Thank goodness I got super oily skin.  It’s so oily I’m sometimes worried that Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron or Saudi Aramco wants to install oil rigs to harvest liquid petroleum hydrocarbon from my face.  I sometimes want to enlist myself in the Guinness Book of World Record for having the face with the most sensational and over-productive sebaceous glands!

My tremendously oily skin is attributed from a deep-seated source.  Its Nengkoy’s (my mom) bizarre food cravings when my astonishingly gorgeous cells were rapidly multiplying inside her womb.  She craved for “kakang gata” (pure coconut milk)!   Nengkoy claim, profess and testify that she would love drinking kakang gata straight from a bowl.

Here in the Philippines, pregnant women’s weird food cravings (or “paglilihi” in Filipino) are a big deal.  We have this notion, regardless of whether such belief has scientific basis or not, that what a pregnant woman craves somehow has an effect on the developing child inside the womb.  It’s like the precursor and fundamental backbone of the child’s DNA mutations and chromosomal translocations.

Because of such craving with unexplained correlation to a child’s appearance, I am the offspring with the lightest complexion among Nengkoy’s children as attributed to the color of coconut milk.  However, as we all know coconut oil is extracted from coconut milk.  And in my specific case, the DNA malformation of Nengkoy’s funky pregnancy cravings happened to have localized right on my face.

Due to this, I learned to accept the fact that I never failed to include the oil blotter film, oil-controller-facial-wash and facial toner for oily skin in my grocery list.  And having a dry skin is the least of my worries.

Buti na lang ‘di sa bao, bunot o bukayo.

Sa Bukid Walang Papel

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I was walking on green fields and leaping through the flowery groves while the raise of the sun is mellowing…  It was an enormously divine green field of dreams…  I smelled the grassy breeze of air and felt the undisturbed delight of the snow capped mountain ranges above…  I was sweetly smiling for experiencing the charming breath of heaven… But I was aware that I was just lucidly dreaming.

I was awakened by the rumbling of my stomach.  With drooping eyes and remnants of dissipating sweet dream on my mind, I went straight to my toilet.  After some intense abdominal and intestinal twisting, wringing and extraction, like a typical Filipino that I am, I reached for my “tabo” (dipper) to soap and wash my posterior end.

With heavy and still half-opened eyes, I reached for the toilet paper dispenser but there was none in it only the cardboard roll was left.  This is when I realized like the controversial Filipino bathroom tissue TV commercial that in lovely and dreamy green fields there is no tissue paper.  That’s when I fully woke up!

Sa bukid walang papel. Uyyy! Ikiskis mo sa pilapil! Uyyy!

In Between Slam Book and Facebook

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After the advent and fame of Slam Book, a notebook bearing questions to be filled out by the keeper’s selected friends that is later to be passed around for other invited contributors to write down their respective intimate answers.  And before the genesis of Slam Book’s virtually formatted type – i.e. social networking sites like Friendster, Multiply and Facebook – a conspicuous hype came into being in the pop culture of young Filipinos in the late ‘80s until early ‘90s.  A lot of people think that after Slam Book has depleted its popularity among the youth it was right away replaced by the web-based social networking sites.  Let me insert, inject and connect what transpired in between these two Herculean cultural revolutions.

What happened in between was the young populace’s visit to a photo studio.  During those years, if my memory serves me right, the most popular photo studio for the youth in Pasay and its nearby cities was “Dimension or Dimensione”.  Young people would schedule an afternoon wearing their most bewitching casual attire, sit on a high chair with a background or lighting of his or her choice and flash their sweetest smile in front of a camera.

The picture is not a group photo but a personal/individual close-up that is ordered to be printed on a wallet size photo-paper in abundant number of reproductions. When the photo in immense copies are already picked-up from the studio, he or she will then write a sweet dedication at the back which will be later given away and distributed to his or her friends and classmates.

Recipients then will collect all these photos and bundle it as part of their cherished possessions.  During those times they will not insert it inside a photo album since they enjoy reading the dedications written at the back from time to time.  They would not leave the thick collected close-ups in their respective houses but to be bizarrely brought along with them wherever they go.  The thickness of their photo collection would signify the degree of their social friendliness and congeniality.

Here are 2 of the amazing samples of my collection which up until now is in my possession…

marie & jhong, my wacky close friends now living in california and new york respectively

Para tayong mga ewan noon! Hahaha!

Make A Wish!

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I wish everyone have a job.

I wish everyone knows how to read.

I wish there is cure for every disease.

I wish there is better stuff on TV.

I wish hate was a thing of the past.

I wish LOVE for all.

I wish for your wish to come true.

I wish we didn’t need wishes…

Ikaw ano wish mo?

Itching for Les Miserables

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More than 10 years ago when Video City (VHS video rental house) was still the “in” thing to do to catch-up and see previous movies people failed to see in the cinemas (pirated DVDs were virtually non-existent and is sooo illegal then, now its not so illegal anymore hahaha!), I stumbled upon a VHS of the 10th anniversary concert of Les Miserables at the Royal Albert Hall.  I rented it out in Video City good for three days without expecting and knowing what to see, hear and experience.

 As soon as the rented VHS tape was running, I was stuck like a barnacle on my seat shrieking silently without blinking an eye.   I was surprised to see Lea Salonga magnificently singing the part of Eponine.  Salonga was just perfectly phenomenal for the signature song of Eponine ‘On My Own’.  But the most chilling number was the “I Dream A Dream” song powerfully sang by Ruthie Henshall.  The concert was just a concert and it was not even the actual musical play but the emotional impact it gave me is far beyond the confines of my senses.

 Video City would not want to sell the said VHS during that time and I failed counting how many times I rented it out.  I suppose, the said tape spent more days in my house compared to the number of days it spent on the shelves of Video City.  I stopped renting it when I discovered the same concert in YouTube.

 Just last night, I stumbled into a website announcing the 25th year anniversary concert of the durable Les Miserables on October 3.  Surprisingly, Lea Salonga will be again in said concert singing the songs of Fantine this time.  There will be no more Video City to rent a VHS tape of this captivating 25th anniversary concert.  Therefore, I pray to the mighty Lord that He work on with His Holy Providence to grant me this awesome wish.  I wanna see it, I wanna feel it, I wanna hear it, I wanna experience it!

However, I’m running out of precious time because according to the official website, the tickets for 7:00 PM show is now sold out and there are few remaining tickets for the 3:00 PM matinee…  But my faith is so heavy-duty that miracles will happen and I am sooo convinced that I will be seeing myself inside the O2 Arena in London on October 3, 2010 at exactly 3:00 PM. 

Sana mali si Elsa ng sinabi nyang “Walang Himala!”

4th Year!!!

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This blog is not very popular.  This blog has not received any recognition.  This blog has few readers.  This blog stinks and is out of this world.  But this blog is 4 years old, or 29 in dog years.  And I don’t have plans of stopping yet!  I fairness, I think I made some pretty nice articles over here.

Four years ago, I let the world know that I am a “blogger”.  At that time I had no idea where this would take me or what would do with it, all I knew was that I has some crazy ideas to share.

It’s not every day you turn 4 years old.  In fact, it is only one day ever, and that day is today for Nengkoy – this blog!  Whether you come to liken this site or totally hate it, here’s to a healthy fourth year.

Apat na taong kabaliwan!!!