2009 Chinese Horoscope

Zodiac's nature:
Lively, quick-witted, amusing, vain, resourceful, intelligent, sensible,unconventional, inventive, mischievous, innovative, independent, a fastlearner with good memory, good in social skills but can be selfish andegoistic. Good at problem solving, ambitious, but prone to laziness.

There are two luck stars shining bright upon the Monkeys; their luck is in the upswing. It is a good year for them to exhibit their leadership. Everything goes smoothly, and they can reach their goals without so many difficulties. A promotion at work is also possible this year. Money luck is quite good, so they should grab this opportunity to maybe start their own business. With their leadership and communication skills, they are able to succeed over the competition. However, they have to beware of the "Spending Star" which is under their sign that will cause them to lose or spend a lot of money. In love affairs, it is a romantic year for the Monkeys. Single Monkeys should travel, as they may meet their dream lover. It is a good year to get married for those who have been dating for a certain period of time. Married couples will enjoy happy events in the family cycle, but they have to keep away from temptation. Regarding health, they should avoid going home late in the evening and avoid going to funerals and wakes; otherwise they will easily absorb negative energy. Apart from this, they should pay attention to their personal safety, and to their diet and exercise routine.

Hmm, let's see if these things would all come true for me...

My name is...

You entered: Daisy Mae Vargas
There are 14 letters in your name.Those 14 letters total to 55There are 6 vowels and 8 consonants in your name.

What your first name means:
Day's eye, from the old English. Also a flower name. Also a translation of the French Marguerite, and used as a pet form of Margaret.

Your number is: 1
The characteristics of #1 are: Initiating action, pioneering, leading, independent, attaining, individual.
The expression or destiny for #1:A number 1 Expression denotes the skilled executive with keen administrative capabilities. You must develop the capacity to be a fine leader, sales executive, or promoter. You have the tools to become an original person with a creative approach to problem solving, and a penchant for initiating action. Someone may have to follow behind you to handle the details, but you know how to get things going and make things happen. You have a good mind and the ability to use it for your advancement. Because of these factors, you have much potential for achievement and financial rewards. Frequently, this expression belongs to one running a business or striving to achieve a level of accomplishment on ones talents and efforts. You have little need for much supervision, preferring to act on your own with little restraint. You are both ambitious and determined. Self-confident and self-reliant must be yours, as you develop a strong unyielding will and the courage of your convictions.
Although you fear loneliness, you want to be left alone. You fear routine and being in a rut. You often jump the gun because you are afraid of being left behind.
The negative attributes of the 1 Expression are egotism and a self-centered approach to life. This is an aggressive number and if it is over-emphasized it is very hard to live with. You do not have to be overly aggressive to fulfill your destiny. The 1 has a natural instinct to dominate and to be the boss; adhering to the concept of being number One. Again, you do not have to dominate and destroy in order to lead and manage.

Your Soul Urge number is: 9
A Soul Urge number of 9 means: With a 9 Soul Urge, you want to give to others, usually in a humanitarian or philanthropic manner. You are highly motivated to give friendship, affection and love. And you are generous in giving of your knowledge and experience. You have very sharing urges, and you are likely to have a great deal to share. Your concern for others makes you a very sympathetic and generous person with a sensitive and compassionate nature.
You are able to view life in very broad and intuitive terms. You often express high ideals and an inspirational approach to life. If you are able to fully realize the potential of your motivation, you will be a very self-sacrificing person who is able to give freely without being concerned about any return or reward.
As with all human beings, you are prone to sometimes express the negative attitudes inherent to your Soul Urges. You may become too sensitive and tend to express emotions strongly at times. There can be significant conflict between higher aims and personal ambitions. You may resent the idea of giving all of the time and, in fact, if there is too much 9 energy in your nature you may reject the idea. You may often be disappointed in the lack of perfection in yourself and others.

Your Inner Dream number is: 1
An Inner Dream number of 1 means: You dream of being a leader and one who is in charge. You want to be known for your courage, daring, and original ideas. You seek unconquered heights. People may get a first impression that you are very aggressive and sure of yourself.

My Song for the Year

It's been a long, long time since I last heard this song. I feel like singing it again. :)

POINT OF VIEW by DB Boulevard

I don't have a cent
Will I pay my rent?
And even my car doesn't work.
Me and my man
He's the one to die for
We have split up

Can't you see
Life's easy
If you consider things
From another point of view
A ah ah ah ah ah
Oh oh yeah
In another way in another point of view
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeeah
Oh oh yeah

I see life and light
All the colours of the world
So beautiful
Won't you come with me
I see birds and trees
All the flowers of the world
So beautiful
Won't you come with me

Can't you see
Life's easy
If you consider things
In another point of view
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Oh oh yeah
In another way in another point of view

"Perfume - The Story of A Murderer"

Though most people found it gross, weird, and ugly, I simply loved it.

Life - Dream = Job

Gotta start dreaming again, and finally start living.

New Seven Deadly Sins

In Religion class, we were taught that there are 7 deadly sins - pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth.

Now, Vatican suggests an updated list for the age of globalization. Pollution, genetic engineering, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia, social injustice and extreme wealth are now listed as mortal sins.

I've heard of this a month ago, but I'm not sure if the topic has already been discussed by the Church here in the Philippines. I'm curious as to how they'll go about it.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/03/13/new.sins/index.html

Commencement Speech of Ms. Cheche Lazaro

I heard this speech when I attended my brother's grad last month. I found it really apt, given my emotional state (careerwise) at that time. I was also able to read Randy Pausch's book, "The Last Lecture" recently and I got lots of inspiring insights from it as well.

Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Schools

Commencement Address

March 28, 2008

Ateneo High School Gym

By Cecilia L. Lazaro

Rev. Daniel Huang, Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus, Mr. Manuel V. Pangilinan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Ateneo de Manila, Fr. Bienvenido Nebres University President, Dr. Maria Assunta Cuyegkeng, Vice-President Loyola Schools, Vice-Presidents, Deans, Administrators, members of the faculty, my dear graduating students, parents of our graduates who also today mark a milestone in their parenting career and deserve applause, friends.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to the Ateneo for a briefing regarding today’s commencement rites. As soon as I had passed by the guards at the gate, I kept asking myself—what in the world made me say yes to this generous invitation to come and speak to you today. While it is certainly an honor, and I thank you for it, it is also intimidating. So intimidating that, just the other day, my voice decided to show just how scared it was by not showing up in full force.

The invitation came at a time when I had been receiving many email messages about an internet video on Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon. The video is entitled “The Last Lecture.” It is not a lecture given by a retiring Professor who had served his term of 50 or more years but by a rather young one who at 47 is at the height of his academic career (as a tenured Academic and co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie-Mellon.) The video was dubbed the last lecture because it was premised on the assumption that if you were going to die soon, what would you want to say?

Randy chose to talk about his childhood dreams – playing football in the NFL, becoming Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals, flying in zero gravity, and becoming a Disney Imagineer. He said that while he had had many dreams, not all of them had come true. The lesson he learned was that if you don’t achieve your dreams, you can still achieve a lot by trying. We can’t control the cards we are dealt, but we can determine how we play the hand.

Life is not about achieving your dreams; it is about how you live your life. He spoke of a life of integrity, of telling the truth all the time even if others opt to take the short cut or shave the truth. Once you start doing that, rationalizing the truth becomes second-nature. But if you hold on to your integrity by telling the truth all the time, living your life the right way, there is a tangible pay-off in the end.

How many of our childhood dreams come true?

And what is so special about childhood dreams?

They are the purest and most honest of our ambitions. They are devoid of considerations like fame, money and power. They are driven by what we love best and enjoy the most.

If you want to achieve your childhood dreams, have good parents who are there to have fun with you. Why? Because it is parents who allow their children the freedom to have fun, to become what they dream, and help them make their dreams a reality. Fun is good. Never underestimate the importance of having fun because if you do something that you enjoy, you will never work a day in your life.

But not everything we encounter in life is fun.

In Randy’s quest to become a football player, he met a coach who drove him hard –much like teachers who make life difficult for you. He felt that critics and coaches who drove you hard or kept criticizing your mistakes did so because they cared. Once they stopped, it was because they no longer cared or had given up on you.

Rejection, like brick walls are there for a reason. Brick walls are there for you to prove how badly you want something. They are there for people who don’t want it that badly. My mother used to tell me all the time when I would cry my eyes out about being rejected that rejection is good. That it is a character-builder. I used to wonder why rejection could ever be good---but with time and experience, I have learned the wisdom of her words. I have learned to never give up because oftentimes the best gold is at the bottom of the pile.

I am not a stranger to rejection. My dream was to work in media and it took all of 15 years after graduation for me to get to the point where I could even begin. There was neither golden spoon nor silver platter. All there was were sheer dogged determination and a never-quit attitude. When we set up Probe Productions, our small media company, 20 years ago, I was told it would not succeed because nobody watched TV programs that talked about issues. We were also trying out an unknown format - the investigative newsmagazine. Then, after 17 years of hard work, we were kicked out and left in the cold. What we learned was dogged persistence and the words, “never say die…” a term we still use today when the going gets tough.

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. Most of what we learn, we learn indirectly.

Like the young Professor, another young boy not far from here had a dream of his own. Let me share with you the story of Victor from whom I learned a lot about life.

Victor was a twelve-year-old boy whom we met some 20 years ago while doing a story on street children. He had run away from home and was living under the bridge at the Quezon City Circle Rotonda. He had an impish look and the happy smile of a child with a wide open future ahead of him. In my rather long interview with him, he answered every question effortlessly…until I asked him if he loved his mother.

After a long silence, he said yes. I asked him why he had run away from home. Silently, his lips began to curl downwards as big tears welled in his eyes. I asked him “kung mahal mo ang nanay mo, bakit ka naglayas?” Again, a long silence. “Kasi hindi nya ako mahal.” “Bakit,” I asked, “Kasi po puta ‘sya.” His answers jarred me, but they were very real in the heart of this 12-year-old boy.

Although Victor was just one of many street children roaming the city, tapping windows of passing cars, he left a deep mark on all of us. Sadly, our eyes had seen what seemed to be the poster child of all young street children, who have been robbed of a future that is rightfully theirs.

Just a few months ago, we returned to Laguna where we had last seen Victor. We found him working, making hollow blocks, never having gone to school, dismissed by his mother as dead. Victor is now 32, has three children but no permanent address or income. He has aged but still has the same smile that we saw 20 years ago. But the glint in his eye was gone, replaced by the bitterness of lost opportunities.

Life had dealt him difficult cards. Like you and me, Victor too had a childhood dream—to become a policeman. But unlike you and me, he did not have a family to support him or allow him to have fun pursuing his dreams, much less send him to school. He wandered the streets at an early age, sniffing rugby to stave off the hunger pangs whenever there was no food to scavenge.

I was one of those in cars who would be irritated at the children who would tap at your car window. But after meeting Victor, I began to ask myself if I might share some blame in putting Victor on the streets by my indifference, by my being too comfortable in life.

I wonder now about his children and ask myself if Victor’s life might be repeated in the lives of his three little ones.

When we are young, we spend time thinking of how we can achieve our dreams. As we grow older, we turn our focus on how we can enable the dreams of others … much like what this great university teaches, to be a “man for others.”

After we recently aired our story, we received many calls offering to help Victor. Many of the viewers remembered him from the first time they saw him on TV. Today, Victor has a job as a utilityman for the MMDA and a little capital for a sari-sari store in the slum area where he lives. Ordinary citizens, viewers who were touched by his story, came forward to help.

Victor took up the challenge, worked and religiously paid the loan every week – 40 or 50 pesos, whatever amount he could set aside which symbolized other people’s trust and faith in him that he wanted to keep.All of us, including Victor, have a light shining within us. This is the idealism that burns brightly in our youth. There is a well-spring of goodness in every person that can be tapped. But that light is fragile, easily snuffed out if we forget to keep feeding the pilot light with passion and commitment. Make sure—like we do in an airplane, to first secure our oxygen masks of idealism before helping others don theirs.

We come from different backgrounds, and our lives move in different directions. We have different family names, but we share a common name. That name is Filipino.

I have great faith in the Filipino. In my media career spanning two decades, I have seen a variety of depressing and uplifting stories. But what stand tall in the clear light of day are the countless encouraging stories of human triumph and greatness of spirit.

As we gather here today, I know there are many who are thinking about what we can do for this country that we love. Like all responsible family members, we want to protect and make good on our common name.

If your dream is to make the Philippines a country we can all truly be proud of, then follow that dream for only you can make your dream a reality.

I end with a quotation from Robert F. Kennedy, and a challenge for you to do your share, no matter how small, to make change for good a dream fulfilled.

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the life of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy, build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

What Do You Remember Most About Me?

If you read this journal, even if I don't speak to you often, please post a memory of me.
It can be anything you want. It can be good or bad, just so long as it happened.
Then post this on your journal too!
(Be surprised (or not) about what people remember about you.)

Happy 2008!

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but instead, I write down my goals for the year. It could be from owning a gadget, to losing something-something pounds, to taking a trip to some other country. I write these down on the last page of my planner (usually from Starbucks, hehe), so I can check by the end of the year if I've successfully accomplished all of them. Well, I'm somewhat happy to know that I've met 3.5 out of my 5 3007 goals. I'll try to do better this year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Homecoming

Went to the Church of Gesu in AdMU last Saturday night to attend the 1st Simbang Gabi mass.

Feels good to be home even for just a few hours.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean For Your Love Life?

Your Birthdate: March 28

You don't just believe in love at first site - you've experienced it. You develop crushes pretty easily, but keeping your interest is another matter! You are very prone to love - hate relationships. Number of True Loves You'll Have: 1 Number of Times You'll Have Your Heart Broken: 6 You are most compatible with people born on the 1st, 10th, 19th, and 28th of the month.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean For Your Love Life?

Hola!

I am soooo totally hooked on Ugly Betty! Although initially I almost didn’t want to watch this adorable series, as I thought it might just be an American version of the original Betty La Fea (which, I used to regularly watch, haha!). But, boy was I glad to be wrong!

Betty Suarez is a 22-year old Latina from Queens, who gets to work as an assistant to the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine in New York City. From the moment she came in to the office wearing glasses and braces, and dressed in a big red poncho with “Guadalajara” boldly written across the front, it’s expected that she won’t fit in with most of the people there. In a place where looks are everything, Betty had her share of humiliation and insults. But she somehow brings life to Mode, given her idealistic nature and willingness to believe in people’s innate goodness. It’s really no wonder why America Ferrera won as Best Actress, as she portrays Betty adorably well.

Betty may be the star of the show, but there are also other characters to watch out for. I totally love Amanda and Marc, a bitchy version of Will & Grace, who torment Betty endlessly. Amanda is the sexy receptionist whose first words to Betty are “Are you the before?”, and who pigs out every time she’s stressed out. Marc is Wilhelmina’s gay assistant who is quick to capture embarrassing pictures of Betty, and create his own “Betty’s Wall of Shame”. Although they give Betty a hard time, there have been instances where they’re all forced to stick together and sometimes even share a few heart-warming moments. This doesn’t mean that they like her, though.

Vanessa Williams is also great as the scheming villainess Wilhelmina Slater, the Creative Director who is always out to get the editor-in-chief post. And may I say she looks good doing her evil deeds? Gosh, her outfits are deliciously fabulous and just to die for! They got me salivating in every episode, he he he.

Unlike in the original telenovela, Betty does not fall in love with her womanizing boss. Instead, she slowly becomes Daniel’s confidante and friend, who always end up bailing him (and even his family) out of trouble. She always looks out for him and never hesitates to give him a piece of her mind every time he screws up, and Daniel somehow hates it when she’s disappointed in him.

If she doesn’t fall in love with her boss, then who is Betty’s love interest? Her knight in shining armour is in the person of the cute and nerdy accountant, Henry, who knows that pink river daisies are Betty’s favourite flowers, that she likes the band Wicked, and that she likes that extra mustard on her sandwich. They like and laugh at the same things, and even finish each other’s sentences. They’re totally perfect for each other—if only he didn’t have an ex-girlfriend, who’s carrying his baby (or maybe not). Nerd love has never been this romantic and complicated!

So in all, I think Ugly Betty has everything you’d want in a show—comedy, drama, mystery and romance. After seeing it, you definitely won’t judge a book by its cover (or a show by its protagonist) again.

What If Harry Potter Went to the Ateneo?

Here's a link to a funny blog entry featuring a parody of Ateneo life and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Thanks for sharing, Ailee!

http://smartaleck30.multiply.com/journal/item/44/Harry_Potter_and_the_Ateneo_de_Manila_University

My Song (of the Moment)

Unwritten
by Natasha Bedingfield

I am unwritten,
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines
We've been conditioned
To not make mistakes
But I can't live that way

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inner visions

"Partners and Marriage"

(Just a re-post of a forwarded email. Long read, but really worth it.)

FOREWORD:
Eduardo Calasanz was a student at the Ateneo Manila University, Philippines, where he had Father Ferriols as professor. Father Ferriols, meanwhile at that time, was the Philosophy department head. Currently he still teaches Philosophy for graduating college students in Ateneo. Father Ferriols has been very popular for his mind opening and enriching classes but was also notorious for the grades he gives. Still people took his classes for the learning and deep insight they take home with them every day (if only they could do something about the grades...) Anyway, come grade giving time, (Ateneo has letter grading systems, the highest being an A, lowest at D, with F for flunk), Fr. Ferriols had this long discussion with the registrar people because he wanted to give Calasanz an A+. Either that or he doesn't teach at all... Calasanz got his A+. Read the paper below to find out why....

PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering days and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages. Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail.

You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality. This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility.

One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again.

If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way he/she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love him/her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood. There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in him/her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams.

From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates. So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts.

I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness.

Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one.

There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers.

Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow mor e fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains. But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait.

The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Most people may not know this about me, but I've kept all the letters, notes, and cards I've received since I was in grade school. Even those written on scratch paper, post-its, and tissue paper. I love writing notes/letters because I think they're more personal and more meaningful.

And so, last Friday night, feeling a little bit nostalgic, I whipped out the box containing those I got in college. I had to laugh at the stuff we talked about then-- boys, stinky teachers, failing grades in Math, boys, short-term goals like having boyfriends, weird classmates, and more boys! Things were definitely a bit less complicated, albeit more dramatic, then.

I thought about the faces behind those letters, and remembered all the things we've been through. And then I came across a note, with handwriting I didn't recognize. This poem was written on a torn 1/2 piece of notebook paper:

PERFECT WOMAN

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn,
A dancing shape, an image gay;
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her havehold motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance on which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, live, kisses, tears and smiles.

And now I see with eyes serene
The very pulse of the machine,
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warm, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

-William Wordsworth

Hmmm...

People say: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

I say: "Too much absence makes the heart wonder (or even wander.)"

Me no millionaire

A colleague shared with us some interesting points she read in the book "The Millionaire Next Door". If I remember correctly, the book was based on interviews done by the authors (a couple of psychologists, I think) of several well-off people in States.

So what did they find out? A millionaire's profile is:
- 50 something male
- retired, self-employed (but not necessarily a businessman)
- married with 3 kids; spouse is usually a housewife or if working, a teacher
- has lived in their residence for 20 years; usually owns secondhand cars
- spends 10% of earnings (not so sure about the figure, basta super way below their means)
There's more, but I can't remember them now.

Anyway, a question discussed was, if you own a million pesos now, are you already considered a "millionaire"? Answer: not necessarily. The measure of wealth differs with age, like a 40-year old is expected to have more wealth that a 23-year old.

So, how do you know if you're wealthy at your age? They've come up with the following formula:

Net Worth = Age x Gross Annual Income

10

The figure you get should be what you have in your savings right now. Now, if you have less than this amount, join the club. If you have more, call me. =)

Irksome Twosome

I went to the bookstore with my sis this afternoon, with one mission in mind: to get our hands on the 7th and last Harry Potter book.

Apparently, they're not displaying the books so you had to pay for it first then claim your copy from the customer service counter right beside the cashier.

So after paying, the receipt was handed off to Girl In-charge. While we were waiting for the book, my sis and I noticed Office Woman by the CS counter browsing through the important parts of the book while asking Girl In-charge crucial questions about it.

Office Woman: Naa na diay anak si Harry? (Harry had a kid?)
Girl In-charge: O, kay after 19 years naman na sya. (Yeah, this was after 19 years.)
*Picture my sis and I pacing back and forth, trying hard not to commit murder in a bookstore. Grrr.
Office Woman: So, kinsa diay ang namatay? (So, who died?)

I walked out. Good thing, my sis didn't hear Office Woman or else Harry would've been left alone with the freaks.

Wanted: Scar Remover

Been rubbing Sebo de Macho on my horrendous leg scars for months now, hoping they would disappear. But I've no such luck. The cream definitely prevented the scars from darkening, but now they're white. UGLY white.

So if you know of any other miracle creams, let me know. Pleeeez, I'm utterly desperate.